


The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold

by liminalweirdo, slowlimbs



Series: when we hit the city limits don't forget me for a minute (tonight) [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Bickering, Bisexual Richie Tozier, Choking, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Eddie is back from the dead!, M/M, Mutual Pining, Richie Tozier Has a Big Dick, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, vague kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:46:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27316477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liminalweirdo/pseuds/liminalweirdo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/slowlimbs/pseuds/slowlimbs
Summary: The house on 29 Neibolt collapses. And then Eddie wakes up.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: when we hit the city limits don't forget me for a minute (tonight) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1994314
Comments: 24
Kudos: 139





	The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold

**Author's Note:**

> "The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history." - Oscar Wilde, _The Picture of Dorian Grey_

Dying, as it turned out, was painful. 

Coming back to life, as it fucking turned out, was _worse_. Eddie’s chest aches with the weight of his heart and lungs. His stomach pumps black bile up and through his mouth as he vomits — water rushing through his nose — on his hands and knees in the outer cistern of the sewer. Thank God for small mercies. He wasn’t sure if he’d have been able to find his way out of the dark on his own.

Where had they gone? His last memory was of Richie — _‘I fucked your mother’_ , he swallows thickly; shame filling him. Were those really the last words he’d said to the man he’d fallen in love with all over again in the span of two days? — Richie’s face close to his, tears in his eyes.

“I hope you fixed your glasses.” He says to no one, dragging numb limbs up onto the bank and squinting into the sun. The Town House was the best place to start looking. He’d at least know Richie’s car.

**~**

Richie had stayed in town. Which is fucked ‘cause it’s not like he even wanted to be here in the first place. He hadn’t wanted to come at all. Maybe none of them had, but now he kind of can’t bring himself to leave. 

He’d c— he’d called the people that had to know. Had to know about Eddie. He’d called because he couldn’t stomach the thought of Eds going ‘missing’ like all those missing kids. He remembers how fucking terrified he’d been when he’d come across that missing poster of himself, and he just can’t — he can’t think about finding Eddie’s picture in the paper: Last seen…

Last seen in a goddamn cistern, covered in blood and filthy water. Brave Eddie who’d pulled a knife out of his own goddam face in order to defend himself. 

What happens instead, though, is Eddie’s picture in the obits. He’s flipping through the paper absently, because there’s nothing else to do in this godforsaken town. If he wrote his own shows, maybe he’d be writing, and not cancelling, gigs. They were pissed, Steve was pissed, but fuck it. “Fuck off,” he’d said over the telephone. It hadn’t made him feel any better.

Somehow, Richie doesn’t expect it, the picture in the paper, but there it is. _Edward Kaspbrak. 1976-2016_. Christ. The way the date ends just like that. Richie hates this year. He wants it to be over, but it’s only fucking September. Winter, cold; it all seems worlds away. Like it’s only ever been Summer, again and again, in fucking Derry.

He should leave, he knows it. But he can’t. He feels like something’s unfinished. Like he’s forgotten something, somewhere, but he has no idea what.

**~**

It’s like a magnet, pulling at him. The car is there — the stupid red convertible: obnoxious, loud, unflinching in its gaudy colour and design — so Richie must be.

No one acknowledges him as he makes his way inside the Town House, so tired, feet thudding on the floor. He briefly considers the possibility that he’s a ghost, or a zombie, dragging himself up the stairs.

Every breath burns him. Like he’s been underwater too long. He wants his inhaler. He wants to breathe clearly without mud and filth in his chest. He pauses to vomit again, more black bile, into a plant pot.

He just wants Richie. He wants to apologise. He wants to apologise for all of it.

That magnet keeps pulling, pulling, pulling until he’s stood outside a door, blinking blearily at the number before raising a fist and knocking. Twice. Even that hurts. It hurts his knuckles and his neck, his stomach where he was run through. He didn’t even think to check that.

He knocks again.

“Jesus Christ,” Richie says. He was sure he put the Do Not Disturb sign on the knob outside so that no one would come in. He’s as still as a meadow hare, thinking _maybe they’ll go away_ , but then the knock comes again.

He struggles off of the bed. It’s harder than it should be. His fucking calf muscles hurt, for some reason — something to do with not moving around more further than the confines of the little room will allow. He slams his hip off of the corner of the mini bar that exists, but is empty (now), and then reaches the door, rubbing at the ache in his side, grumbling under his breath.

He pulls the door open and for a moment it’s like… just all this fucking fear. In his head, someone whispers _it’s not real, it’s not real_ , and it sounds like his childhood self. For a moment he thinks _we didn’t kill It_ , because how else could Eddie be here? As real as Georgie had been, all the way underground. 

He’s breathing hard, fast short audible breaths, trying to think on his feet while his mind is fucking swimming. For the briefest of seconds his eyes flicker, almost but not quite away, from Eddie’s face.

Eddie’s eyes.

Those are Eddie’s eyes. To the very core of him. Richie would know them anywhere. “What the everloving fuck,” he says. Whispers it. “What the f—” he reaches out and doesn’t know where to touch him, so he doesn’t. 

It’s been weeks. Weeks, and… 

He scores on the second attempt and pulls him inside by the sleeve of his shirt, so careful, in case his fingers just slide right through. They don’t though. They connect with skin and bone; clammy, but real. Living. 

So gently he reaches past him and closes the door. Hears it click shut. 

“There was a funeral,” he says, speaking quieter than he even knew he could. Like he’s in the world’s strictest library. “I didn’t go.”

Eddie opens, and then closes his mouth. His throat feels like it’s stuffed with leaves.

Instead he coughs, rasping and wet, knowing how he must look, shaking his head and hoping that Richie understands. Richie, here, safe, in front of him. Eddie sighs. It hurts. _Everything_ hurts. The mini bar is empty, and he looks at it for a few long minutes before fixing Richie with a stern frown. Because drinking yourself to death isn’t the answer.

He coughs again, feels more of that awful liquid rise in his stomach, and runs to the bathroom. Door left open, he leans his cheek against the toilet seat and lets everything come up. Because he’s here now. He’s safe.

God, he’s so tired. And they had a funeral for him. He closes his eyes, relishing the feel of cold porcelain against his skin for a moment before pulling himself on the sink and sticking his head under the tap. He drinks until his stomach bulges, and looks at Richie again.

“I didn’t fuck your mother.”

“I was gonna say I fucked yours,” Richie says, “But then you were vomiting, so…” he shrugs awkwardly, like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. “You seemed busy.”

And, christ, Richie wants to hug him, get his arms around him. He wants to press his face into his hair and just— but he probably smells like sewer and sick. Instead, he asks “are you okay?” from the doorway. “You were— there’s blood on you. Jesus, there’s fucking blood— let me see,” he says, and steps forward, reaching for the hem of his shirt like this wound needs immediate attention — like Eddie didn’t apparently just fucking walk himself here with a mortal wound, and so, Richie reasons, it cannot be that bad.

_Please._

_But you saw it_ , the voice in his head whispers. _You saw him stabbed, you saw him die._ But no, he didn’t, he hadn’t seen him die. Eddie had died alone, while they were killing It, crushing Its heart in the cistern. 

That hurts more than anything else. It was that that he couldn’t get out of his head for days, for weeks. That Eddie had, at the end of it, been alone.

_How_ , he wonders, but he can’t ask it yet. It’s too much at once. 

“I’m okay,” Eddie says, “I’m okay, don’t…” and he steps back to get away from Richie’s hands, shaking his head more.

“I don’t understand, either, man. One second I’m fucking bleeding out in the sewers, the next I’m just. Not fucking here.” Eddie shivers, runs a hand through his hair, looks down at his own hands. Fear punches him low in the gut, seeing again the claw. Richie’s face. The clown. Richie crying. _Richie. Richie_ , he remembers saying, remembers holding the word in his mouth like it would save him.

With careful, trembling fingers Eddie lifts his shirt, holds the sticky hem away from his sticky body, and swallows deeply. 

Like it never fucking happened. Eddie runs his fingers over where the wound should have been, and just feels dried muck and blood.

“Richie.” Whispered, because it had to be a trick. Derry wasn’t kind, not like this. “Richie.”

And Richie wishes he lived the kind of life where he could feel relief, but this feels like something has been stolen. Like they’ve stolen something. But, he tells himself, they stole it _back_. Eddie’s life. He never deserved to die. Neither did fucking Stanley, for that matter, but here they are.

“Oh, what the fuck, what the fuck,” Richie whispers, and wishes he didn’t sound so scared. And Eddie said no, but Richie can’t— he can’t not. He closes the distance again, between them, half cornering Eds in against the wall. The bathroom smells, oddly, like rot. Like leaves and that peculiar dirty water-smell that sewers and drain-pipes have. Stagnant. He can’t tell if the smell is coming from the puke or Eddie or maybe just the whole goddamn town.

“You have to get—” Eddie would want to be clean. “Let me—” _touch you, just let me help, let me know this is real._ “Here… you want to clean up?” He takes one shaky breath and then another and thinks maybe they should go to the hospital, but for what? No one else would understand this shit. “It’ll help.”

“Yeah I—.” He gulps, his stomach heaves, and the breath leaves him harsh through his nose. “I kind of smell like shit, dude.” Because he does. He smells like sewer and dead things. Like things long forgotten in the depths of the earth. “I don’t—” He wants to reach out for him. He wants to curl small under his chin. _Be not afraid_ , he remembers from church, and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes hard.

“Is this real?” Eddie asks, small and broken like he’s asking for a break from anger, like he’s asking Bill not to be mad at him. _‘Do you hate me?’_ he doesn’t ask, because he’s scared of what the answer will be. “Is everyone—. Did everyone get out? Is It gone?” Pennywise. A flash of light, terrifying, in the glorious dark.

Then a voice. A voice while he had been _floating_ between here and there. One that had told him he’d done well, to be at peace, to let go. And he had. He had. And then he’d opened his eyes underwater and hauled himself out of the deep to come to Richie.

Like a homing pigeon.

“I’m sorry, Richie.”

There’s silence, for a beat, and then Richie says “What the fuck are you sorry for?” and it’s louder than he’s spoken since Eddie arrived. It’s more his normal tone of voice, and it loosens something in his chest like a harsh cough. He reaches out and, with curled knuckles, cuffs Eddie on the shoulder, only it’s not a cuff. It’s barely a touch at all. Almost a caress. His knuckles ghost over the sharp bone at the top of his shoulder and off. For a split second, he touches his neck with the palm of his hand and then he whispers “Jesus Christ, Eds,” and he pulls him, coaxes him closer. “Come here. Just— fucking, I won’t hurt you.” He gets his arms around him, feels his bare arm slide along tile, that’s how close they are to the wall. He’s barely managed to wriggle into that small place Eddie’s left. 

It’s the lightest of hugs. It’s like how he’d hug his fucking grandmother, all arthritic and frail. “Everyone’s fine. All of us, it was just y—” his voice catches somewhere in his throat, clots. He swallows and changes tack, because he thinks that if he stops talking now, he’ll cry. If he stops talking now, he’ll be able to concentrate on the beat beat of Eddie’s heart — and he’ll fucking cry. “Pretty sure we fucking killed It, yeah. I mean… get— get Mike to tell you, he—” he takes another breath that shakes, and then he does shut up, has to. “Jesus… _I’m_ sorry,” he breathes. His nose stings. _Goddamn_. “I didn’t—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie says, but there’s no real malice in it, body stiff and then softening in Richie’s arms, pressing his nose to his shoulder and inhaling deeply. “I-I. I don’t know. You’re scared of me? I think? I’m scared of me. What if this is just— Derry. Being Derry. What the _fuck_.” Brings his hands up to trail fingertips over his chest, steps away from him again, back of his head connecting with tile in a hollow thunk. “It was so dark for so long, Richie. And then I woke up and. I wasn’t even in the sewer anymore, not really.”

“Wh—” Richie swallows. “Where were you?” he asks. The front of his shirt is damp now, stained with water and muck. God he needs to do something other than think about how Derry would be this cruel. How Derry might give him back his best friend and then rip him away again, only maybe worse, next time. He turns away and starts the shower, keeps his fingers under the faucet until it’s warm. He half expects blood, or black— no, what was it? Greywater. But the water is just clean and clear and warm. 

“That fucking— flow pipe, or whatever it’s fucking called,” Eddie says. “The part where it flows out into the river. Near the Barrens.” He strips. He doesn’t even consider being shy, being modest, because suddenly he’s so aware of how cold he is. How cold and small and exhausted. He clambers into the tub with no grace, huddling under the warm spray and turning the tap until it’s boiling, grime sliding off his skin to return to the drain, his forehead against the wall. “Can I grab some shampoo, Rich? Please?”

“Yeah, on it,” he says, shaking himself out of some weird, mental middle-space. His eyes are on the place where the wound should be, like he half expects that unmarked skin to slide away to reveal something gruesome, infested with maggots, but it doesn’t happen. He turns away and reaches into the back of the tub, behind Eds, for the shampoo. Some of the spray catches his shirt and his hair and his glasses. He pulls back and hands the bottle to him, but Eddie’s eyes aren’t open, so he draws it back. “Eds,” he says, and wonders if he should call someone, call Bill or Mike… _But say what?_ What if telling it makes it real? What if telling it makes the universe or Derry realize it glitched or hiccuped or something, and then they— and Eddie might just… disappear. “Here,” he says, and feels completely fucking useless. His glasses have great globs of water on one lens. He takes them off with one hand and sort of tosses them onto the sink behind him. He thinks that he doesn’t particularly want to leave him alone or fucking let him out of his sight ever again and Jesus Christ, who is he, Mrs. K? But what if something happens? What if he disappears? What if he just… ugh, fuck.

“Don’t go.” Quiet, under the hiss of the shower, rubbing soap into his scalp until it hurts. “Just— talk to me.” Because the silence in his head is deafening. The silence he’s been in for weeks. “I’m scared, Richie. I’m so scared.” And with that he sinks to sit on the base of the tub, rubbing his face with his palms. “What the fuck is happening, Richie?” He looks up at him, eyes dark and afraid. “What happened? I just remember _you_.” Like that’s all he can remember from his childhood, from the two days in Derry, like that’s all his life has ever been. He sniffles emptily. He doesn’t have tears to spare.

“I’m not going,” Richie reassures him, softly, and follows him down. His knees hit the tile, and he’s got his elbows braced on the tub like he can frame Eds with his arms. He swallows. The shower sounds so loud. “Here, I’m gonna…”

Richie half stands — it already hurts, Christ when did he get so old? — and he grabs the shower head, pulling it down. He gets a bunch of water on the floor they’ll have to remember not to kill themselves on later, and he touches Eddie’s cheek. There’s still a bandage there, soaked with water. “Look up? Tilt your head back,” he says, and it’s like he knows how to do this. Take care of anyone. He doesn’t, but he’s pretending he knows pretty well. He shields Eddie’s eyes with one hand and rinses the soap out out of his hair, smoothing his hand through his hair when he’s sure the suds aren’t going to blind him, rinsing out dirt and grime.

He should feel more self-conscious than he does. But he doesn’t.

When the water from his hair runs clear, Rich says “I’m shutting this off,” and reaches for the taps. He twists the shower off, and lets the shower head fall against the outside of the tub. It’s just the bath now, that’s running. He waits until the water in the bottom collects all the grime and drains it away, and then he puts the plug in, and the bath begins to fill with clean, hot water. Eddie’s shaking and Richie doesn’t really know how to make it stop. Is this shock? What do you do for shock? He thinks keeping them warm is one thing, one thing he can do. 

When the tub is full he shuts off the water and they’re plunged into silence. Richie takes a breath and starts to speak — tells him what happened, after they left him in the cistern. It hurts to talk around it, around that reality, but he manages it, crouched there on the floor of the bathroom. He busies himself with running his fingertips across the surface of the water, his eyes flickering between the ripples it makes, and Eddie’s face. All of it is easier without his glasses. The whole world is softer. Every once in a while, he scoops water up almost absently in the palm of his hand and spills it over Eddie’s shoulders and back, trying to keep him warm. He already feels warmer than he did when Richie touched him in the entryway. Finally he’s finished the story. He spills a handful of water down the back of Eddie’s neck and lets his fingers brush the place his wet hair sticks to his skin, and then draws back a little bit more. Braces both elbows on the side of the tub and rubs his eyes with his fingertips. “I didn’t want to leave you in that house. I tried to get you out, but there was no time… I’m…” he can’t apologize again. “So… so that’s what happened.” 

“Do you… do you think I’m angry with you, for leaving me?” It’s easier in the bath, Eddie thinks. The gentle trickle of warm water soothing him, leaning his own elbows against where Richie is resting. “I’m. I’m not. You didn’t know. None of you did. If you’d waited you might have died down there with me.” Softly, watching the other man’s face. “And then— I wouldn’t have had anything tying me here.” Because some deep intrinsic part of him knows that it was Richie who brought him back. Richie, waiting for him without knowing. Richie who he loves so desperately.

They sit in silence for long minutes, just keeping each other company, Eddie with his chin on his crossed arms, so close he can smell Richie.

“You know, we came to see you a few times, in the… in the between part.” His breath shudders. “Me and Myra. When you were in New York. We came. I didn’t know who you were but we came anyway. I felt like I had to. I wanted to.”

Richie hates thinking that they could have passed each other on the street and not known one another’s names. He hates thinking it — the act of thinking it. “Oh yeah,” he says. “Did you laugh? I bet I was the funniest fucking person you ever saw…” he scratches his eyebrow then drops his arm. He actively stops himself from touching Eddie’s wet hair again. _Don’t touch the other boys, Richie…_ “I uh… you know, it’s funny, but after Mike called me. After I threw up, I was supposed to be doing a show and I went out there and I said “My name is Richie Trashmouth…” he laughs a little. “And I just totally froze up, you know? Like _where the hell did that come from?..._ ”

_I love you._ Eddie thinks, but doesn’t say, dropping his forehead down against Richie’s arm. It used to be easy. He remembers that. It was easy to roughhouse and touch and exist in each other’s spaces. “You said you threw up. I crashed my car.” He sighs, dropping against Richie’s skin. “Myra was fucking livid. She tried to stop me coming.” Sighs again, eyes closed, just allowing himself to _feel_. “You weren’t as funny as you used to be.” He brings one hand up to close over his wrist. “It just made me sad. I didn’t know why, then.” He does now. Because his heart broke with how much he missed him, with how much he wanted him. Without ever knowing.

“Oh. Yeah,” Richie says. “Well, I don’t write my own material so… if I did, I would’ve been funnier. I’m just, you know, too good for everyone… they couldn’t handle it. You couldn’t handle it.” He laughs a little, but doesn’t really feel it. After a little while he says: “Water’s getting cold, buddy,”

_What is it, buddy?_

_I fucked your mom._

He’d almost expected… something else. 

“There’s water all over the floor, be careful.” He stands, gropes for his glasses and wipes them on a clean corner of his shirt before he puts them on. The place in town fixed the broken lens, but the prescription is slightly off. Like this place, this town. “Towel,” he says, absently, looking around but there’s none that are clean. Fuck, he should have let people come in to clean the room. “Shit… here…” he pulls one off of the door, the one he’d used this morning. It’s dry, at least.

Eddie takes it, wrapping it around his shoulders like a child, pushing his nose into the fabric and starting to shiver again. 

For once he’s surefooted on the wet floor, looking up at Richie like he’s seeing him for the very first time. “Richie.” Because his name is a mantra, something to ground him, to keep him safe, to stop him— to stop him _floating_. He looks down at himself. At where there should at least be a mark on his stomach, and feels nothing. Has felt nothing, really, about the situation. He supposes it’s shock. It must be shock. It’s shock that sends him pitching into Richie’s body, dizziness making his knees weak, his forehead against his shoulder.

He’s warm, and so solid, and Eddie tries not to think of hot heady evenings pressed up against him in the hammock.

“Richie.”

Richie slips on the floor he told them not to slip on, but catches himself. It hurts, somewhere. He thinks he fucks up his leg or his back. It doesn’t matter. He catches himself and Eddie, and panics, first “Whoa! Wh— okay, you okay? Are you okay?” but then he starts to laugh, and it’s mostly relief. Some of it’s fear, just coming out any way it can. His clothes are soaked, now. “You’re gonna— my shirt’s got shit on it,” he says. “You’re gonna get it on you. Come on… fuck, come out. Uh. Sit— here, I’ll get you some clothes. You wanna… hm, fuck, well, I don’t know what to do. Soup?” He suggests, ludicrously. It sounds ludicrous coming out of his mouth. “We should change that bandage. How’s your face? Okay first sit.” 

Somehow they’ve made it out to the main room while he’s babbling. He kind of plonks Eddie down onto the bed and half tumbles over him. He says “Ohjesus,” like it’s one word, and they are Much Too Close for this level of undress, but he’s not thinking it in any specific way. It’s another way — ingrained. Like how punishment always follows closeness. The catch of his fingers against Bowers’s cousin in the arcade and — and _don’t touch the other boys, Richie_ and… nothing good comes of this. His leg is between Eddie’s, the only thing keeping him from stumbling into him is the mattress, the way his knee is jammed against it, and his forearm, holding himself up. 

For Eddie, it’s the culmination of a lifetime of longing, of loving, of wanting and not allowing himself that drives him. His hands flutter up over Richie’s shoulders, his neck, his own chest heaving like he’s going to hyperventilate. His eyes drift and catch on the ropes of veins in his arm, the artery in his neck, the line of bone in his jaw and he wants to _bite_ and _kiss_ and _lick_.

He clears his throat, blinks, hand finding the man’s bicep and holding him steady. Meets Richie’s eye, and says nothing. There’s nothing to be said. If Richie can’t see every single emotion in his face then—. Eddie swallows, makes space for the leg between his thighs, and looks away.

Richie’s fucking frozen, for a moment. For a moment, everything in his whole fucking body tenses up, it’s like he’s not breathing, can’t breathe. He doesn’t even think his heart is beating only it is, it has to be, because he feels fucking electric. The heart has something to do with electricity doesn’t it? He forgets, they learned it in science class, a century ago. 

He has to get up, has to… but Eddie’s holding him, his arm. He has to get out of this, somehow, but can’t. He’s not sure how. He’s shaking though, or maybe Eddie’s shaking, and it’s vibrating through them both. “Eds,” he whispers. He’s half afraid that now, right now, is when something will go horribly wrong. Like Eddie will look back with unfamiliar, yellow eyes or— “Eddie,” he says, and he can’t keep the panic out of his voice, just knows it’s deeper than fear of an unnameable creature in the sewers — one whose identities slide off of it like dying flesh, deeper than the wrongness of this town. 

“Richie.” Barely even a whisper, a gasp of breath dying over his lips, because this can’t be happening. He can’t be here. He either died, and this is some lovely dream his brain is giving him on his way out, or he’ll blink and be back in New York. With her.

But that’s not what happens. What happens is he lifts his other hand to brush the backs of his knuckles so lightly they’re only touching parts of Richie’s jaw. “I’m sorry.” Because if nothing else his life has taught him shame. Shame for lack of restraint. Shame, shame, shame. “I’m sorry.” He doesn’t know what he’s apologising for, outside of not being the Eddie Richie expects. He wants to say something smart and sharp, to shatter the look of _fear_ on Richie’s face. 

“Man, shut the fuck up,” Richie whispers back, and then he kisses him — sort of wrong? Kisses the corner of his mouth and that’s— oh Jesus fucking Christ — it’s a lot. He smells achingly familiar. Richie’s eyes are squeezed shut. Shame shoots through him hotly, but it’s coasting beneath something else. He mouths the word ‘sorry’, but then he kisses him properly anyway. _Shit, fucking shit_ , he thinks, but it’s like he can’t— he can’t stop. His breath shakes out heavily against Eddie’s mouth, and he suddenly feels on the verge of tears again. He grips his face, the unbandaged side, a little too hard, without meaning to. Like he can keep him here, and solid and real and warm. But he has to stop. Make it something— else, a joke, make it a symptom of his fucking terror, he doesn’t know. It’s only been one second. Maybe two. A handful at best. He pulls back and clumsily braces the hand against Eddie’s cheek against the mattress, tilting them a little, scrambling back, or off, or somewhere — somewhere else.

“Don’t—.” It’s gasped, but then his mouth is gone and his weight is gone and Eddie’s left grasping at something that’s not there. The ghost of Richie’s lips against his as he sits up, carefully, gathering the towel around his body as he looks at him. “Why did you stop?” Because he can’t make it any more obvious that he _wants_ this. He _wants_ Richie. He loves him. He reaches for him again, then doubts himself. 

Richie is just happy he’s back. That’s all that was. It was joy with nowhere to go. Eddie swallows, looks at his feet, twists his fingers in the towel. 

“Richie I. I came back because you’re still here. Because— Because—.” He shakes his head. “Because we were—.” _We were robbed of a lifetime of happiness._ Happiness he can see so clearly. Graduating with Richie, road trips filled with honey sweet kisses and uneaten ice cream melted on hot beaches, Richie snoring into his hair, their first home together, watching from backstage as Richie makes the world laugh about shopping trips with his boyfriend.

And then there are tears. Bitter and boiling on his cheeks as the crest in his chest breaks over the sandy limestone of his heart, cracking it and filling it with stinging salt water. “Please.”

Richie wishes he fucking knew, in this moment, where the fuck crazy Richie Trashmouth Tozier went — his eleven-, twelve-year old self, fearless and furiously alive and he doesn’t know— Jesus, doesn’t even know where he ever dredged up that much courage, as a kid, because he sure to fuck doesn’t have it right now. But Eddie’s crying, suddenly, and they’re both sitting at the end of this weird, too-big hotel bed in wet clothes, and Eddie’s towel and Eddie’s crying and that’s not right, that’s not fucking right. That’s not how this is going to go. “I thought—” he starts, and it could go a thousand different ways — _thought you wouldn’t want to, thought we should check that cut on your face, thought you might be someone— something else, thought I was fucking dreaming, thought—_

_Why did you stop?_ Eddie had asked. “I don’t know,” Richie says, but then realizes he doesn’t know how to start again. How to breach that distance. “Hey. Come on, don’t cry, fuck—” he reaches out to put his arm around him — boyish arm around the shoulders, just gentler, and then he pulls, melts into him, just hugs him close to his chest, and he feels like he hasn’t even felt that kiss yet, what it means. Like his lips are fucking numb.

This, Eddie thinks, this is what he should be ashamed of. The way he’s crying like he’s a kid again, breath coming too quickly and leaving even quicker. He can remember crying like this when his dad died. He can remember crying like this when Ma put him in the car and sent him to college. He can remember crying like this at twenty nine years old, marrying a woman he didn’t love. 

He presses his face hard into Richie, both hands coming up to clutch at his shirt, rubbing tears and snot into it as he tries to burrow closer. Wants to feel safe. “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t. I—.” Hiccups, grip tightening. “Please don’t. Please don’t go. Please stay with me. Don’t leave me. I’m sorry.” Arms wrapping around his neck as he pulls himself closer, wanting so badly to crumble into dust so that Richie will inhale him and keep him safe in his chest. “I didn’t mean it, Richie. I love you.” It’s ripped from his mouth as he sobs, he doesn’t even think about it. It just spins out between them.

Richie’s brain kind of goes _fft_. But suddenly, “Shh, shhshh, you’re gonna— you don’t have your inhaler,” he says it kind of as a joke. He rocks him a little, rubs his back. “Don’t be sorry, I’m not going anywhere. _You’re stuck with me, kid_ ,” he says in a voice — a voice that wavers between New York taxi driver and, maybe, Ukrainian butcher? It’s unclear. The voice drops, slips away. It’s just Richie left — scared, overwhelmed, desperate. “You’re stuck with me, I got you. I’m not leaving again, I’m not fucking doing that, so shh. Just breathe, I got you.” 

And he does. As real as anything, realer, maybe. “I got you,” he says, again and again. He brushes his palm over Eddie’s damp hair, over his back. He holds him close by the back of his neck and shuts his eyes, breathing against his cheek. “Hey,” he says, “Remember that time we were swimming in the river, and you got that—” he laughs. “That leech on you and started screaming? It was this tiny little leech and you thought you were gonna get like blood poisoning or something, and you kept screaming at me like _get some goddamn salt, you fuckhead_ , and I, haha, I said _neither of us have salt, Eddie, we’re swimming not—_ ah, fuck I forget. I had to burn it off with the match. And we had to walk all the way back to my house for you to wash your hands with soap and water, remember that? And then we— you slept over, I think. Or you were going to, before your mom— but we set up that fort, with the blankets and the— the camping lantern, remember? Jesus, it felt so fucking safe there...”

It breaks Eddie’s heart all over again, hearing Richie speak like that. Skimming over what he’d said with expert Trashmouth skill. 

“Ma never wanted me around any of you.” Miserably, just letting Richie hold him. Because if this was all he would get then he’d take every second of it. He sniffs, hands still fisted against the heat of Richie’s body. “I’ve still got a scar from that fucking leech, don’t laugh about it.” His head rests in the crook of Richie’s neck, he can feel his pulse fluttering, can feel every part of Richie so close to him. So he breathes. He just breathes, hands shifting to let his fingers fall through the curls on the back of Richie’s head. “How did you go from being a skinny twig motherfucker to being like a quarterback? I stayed the fucking same and you grew.”

“Um, I— ate my Wheaties. Breakfast of champions. Keeps you regular, too, I mean, I eat a bowl of that stuff and then immediately have to take a shit…” but Eddie’s still shivering, he’s probably fucking exhausted. “Okay,” Richie says after a moment. “I have something you can borrow. You’re gonna look like a child playing dress-up.” He extracts himself ever so slightly, but he can’t look at him. He pushes his glasses up his nose, keeps his face tipped slightly away. 

“Okay.” Eddie stands, looking so small in the enormous towel, still clutching at it like a security blanket. Doesn’t linger for too long on the bone of that jawline, that jawline that haunted him as a child and then as an adult. Remembers without wanting to the nights Myra would go to bed and he’d sit on their couch. Watching Richie on pay-per-view. Dick hard in his pyjamas and not understanding why.

He understands now. Still feels that deep burn of longing under his skin.

He pulls the towel tighter around his body and ignores the way he’s shaking. Like a kicked fucking puppy. He hates himself.

Richie, meanwhile, digs through his clothes and finds the warmest things he owns. They’re also a combination of the best and worst things he owns — fancy wool sweater he wears, sometimes, for shows or meetings, and these sweat pants he’s had for pyjamas for about ten years — worn soft and pliant, but warm all the same. “Here, put these on. I think— I think you should… eat or something… get something hot. You want, uh… tea? There’s some… coffee’s shit, but the—” he takes a step towards the kitchenette, then hesitates. “There’s only the whitener, too, no milk.”

“I’m not hungry.” It’s the truth. He isn’t hungry. His stomach is full of water and bile, he can feel it rolling inside him. But he takes the clothes, folds and hangs the towel back up, then folds himself into Richie’s warmth. 

He doesn’t meet Richie’s eye as he comes back into the bedroom area, crawling onto the bed and curling in on himself. “I’m sorry I upset you, Richie.” Quietly while he pulls his hands into the sleeves of the sweater, blinking, tears still rolling down his face. He can’t stop them now he’s started, but he’s not actively crying anymore. It’s just happening. “Thank you for the clothes.”

“Would you stop fucking talking to me like you don’t know me?” he asks, then mocks “ _Thank you for the clothes._ Christ.” He thinks _‘I’d do anything for you, you fucker, anything’_ but doesn’t say it. He hesitates only a second before he crawls onto the bed with him. He kicks off his shoes and curls up beside him. “Get under,” he says, pushing at the sheets which are still rumpled from his own sleep. Richie gets under with him. Somewhere in his head, Henry Bowers calls him a faggot, and Richie thinks _fine. Fine, I’m a faggot, and I’ve still got better friends than you._ Their knees knock. His belt digs into his hip and he twists a little, then reaches down to undo it, pull it off. He drops it to the floor, and that’s so much better than the stiff press of leather. “Tell me something you remember,” he says, pillowing his head in one arm. His glasses are knocked slightly askew, but he leaves them. He can still see Eddie. He doesn’t take his eyes off him. God, he… thought maybe he’d never see those eyes on his again. “Please.” He swallows, and it comes out wet.

Eddie hums softly, turning onto his side to watch him, ignores the juvenile way his body _reacts_ to the sound of metal on metal and leather on denim. He’s imagined Richie taking his belt off so many times. “I remember… your mom, and dad… they used to order pizza when I was over because you’d told them I wasn’t allowed it.” Quietly, picking at a loose thread on the pillow case. “I remember being allowed to eat on the sofa, and we used to sit on opposite ends and try to kick each other’s slices out of our hands.” He huffs a small, sad laugh. “I remember going with you to get your glasses fixed and you kept making jokes about why your eyesight was so bad. _Well if you had what I’m packing your eyes would be shit too._ Do you remember that?”

Richie laughs. “Still true. I’ve seen yours now, your eyesight will probably be good for a _looong_ long time,” he says, trying, desperately for a laugh, a real one. Or some righteous outrage, because really he was fine… he was… oh fuck… Eddie, so familiar and small and lovely. He’s got hips that slide, translucent beneath his pale skin and those impossible eyelashes and. He swallows. “I’m gonna take off this bandage,” he says, and reaches, tipping Eddie’s face a little to pick at the tape. “Shouldn’t leave it wet.”

“Okay.” Obedient, always, with Richie. Closes his eyes and tilts his chin up and—. Wait.

“You motherfucker, there’s nothing wrong with my dick!” He waits until Richie has picked the bandage off before smacking his wrist away with the back of his hand. “Maybe your eyesight is the way it is so you see yours as huge when it’s actually a fucking vagina, fuck you.” But he’s smiling, face clean, no injury to be seen.

It’s a good joke. Richie hears it, somewhere else, but his eyes are on the cut— the place there should be a cut, on Eddie’s face. “Oh Jesus,” he says, with probably the wrong inflection. He says it like it’s growing tentacles or teeth or something, the cut. But it’s not. There’s no cut there at all. Not even a scar. “Oh my god…” Richie reaches out and touches his cheek softly, rubs at it. “It’s gone, Eds. Just like the other one.” Suddenly he has a brief, terrifying thought. “Am I… am I going fucking crazy?” Is any of this actually happening? Is Eddie really… is he even here?

“Well… that makes sense.” Eddie says, levelly, even though panic sparks in his eyes as he reaches up to feel. “I mean— If Bowers was in league with Pennywise, and—.” Flutters a fist over his stomach, swallowing. “I don’t know, man. I feel like if you are I definitely am.” He sighs, suddenly so tired again. It’s a lot. This whole day has been a lot. But he lets his hand fly out to pinch Richie, hard. Because he usually knows what he’s thinking. “If you’re crazy, I am too, ‘kay?”

“ _Ow_ , fuck. Okay. Okay.” He reaches to pinch him back, but he’s all sweater sleeves, and he mostly gets a pinchfull of fabric. Instead he spreads his palm out over Eddie’s upper arm, rubs it gently, like he’s trying to warm him up, then settles a little, doesn’t pull away. Eddie looks so fucking tired. “I’m here,” he says. “I’ll be here when you wake up, promise…” as if to prove it, he reaches up and takes off his glasses, sets them down somewhere on the pillow above his head. Settling in to stay.

Eddie doesn’t exactly respond, just watches him put his glasses away before pulling at him firmly. Pulls until one of Richie’s arms is under his head, the other draped around his waist, his own arms tucked under Richie’s chest (he fucking _relishes_ that Richie is so heavy he can’t feel it anymore) and curled between their bodies. “You had a funeral for me?” He mulls over this, sleepy, for a few minutes. “Am I, like, legally dead?”

“Yeah,” Richie whispers softly, and doesn’t even make a move to pull away. He doesn’t even tense up, just curls into him, until they _fit_. “I was the one that— um, called the— that called everyone. I called your— Myra. I had to look her up, you know and— she was… wow, a lot, you know what I mean? The funeral was here, but I… I just…” he sighs. He didn’t go. He said that already. He didn’t go. Couldn’t.

“No, no.” Eddie grins against his neck, then starts to giggle, then _howls_ with laughter. “You called Myra? I bet that went down well.” 

Because Myra has caught him, once, pants around his knees and fist around his erection.

“It’s not funny. It’s not. Oh my god…” he tries to catch his breath, but keeps giggling. “I guess I don’t have to worry about getting divorced, then.” He can’t stop laughing, pressing his face into Richie’s neck as he shakes with it. He can’t even bring himself to feel sad for her. He just can’t.

“Yeah, okay,” says Richie, “she seemed to have a fucking personal vendetta— what the _fuck are you laughing about?_ ” he asks, but it’s drowned beneath Eddie’s gales. He gets caught up in it, too, laughing with him, rolling over him, too close, playful, like children, like wrestling beneath the summer sun. When he finally catches his breath, they’re so so impossibly close. Closer than two friends should be. His leg is hooked over Eddie’s, chest to chest. His face is in his hair, still damp and smelling like his own shampoo. “Divorced,” he repeats. And oh Christ his heart is pounding. “I mean she wasn’t exactly a _peach_ , she actually hung up on me the first time. I don’t know what possessed me to call back. She reminded of me—” he starts laughing again, a little hysterical. “She reminded me of your fucking mom, man.”

“Yeah so— _exactly_ — so divorced, yeah.” Richie sets him off again, peals of laughter while he clutches at him, the immediate feeling of _too close_ and _not close enough_ running through his veins. “I can’t go back to that, dude. I can’t. Could you? Like, if you were clearly unhappily married and then you came back here and you had all these _memories_ all of a sudden?” The restaurant, Richie’s huge hands clasped around his, beating him easily in an arm wrestle - _let’s take our shirts off and kiss!_ \- no. He couldn’t go back to her. Not with this in his heart.

Richie feels like he should ask — how, why — but it doesn’t matter, how Eddie had ended up with that person, that life, that world. What matters is this right now; them, right here. “Then don’t go back,” he tells him, but then, “We have to tell the others,” and can’t quite bring himself to say _but not yet_. He wants this to himself right now. He wants just the two of them, just for a little while. He lets his hand slide down Eddie’s side until he hits this warm strip of skin between his shirt and pants. _His_ clothes, that Eddie’s wearing. And he feels— fuck, that hits something in him, in his belly. He feels his dick stir in his dress pants and he tilts his hips away, shifts back slightly. That’s not— that’s so far removed from this. 

“Why?” Eddie shrugs, moving with him, own hand running down Richie’s arm until it joins his at his hip. “I’m not going back. That’s what I’m saying. I can’t go back to a lie, man.” Thinks, for a second, then; “What exactly did Myra say to you?” Because if she recognised his voice… Eddie flushes purple, and hides his face. What if Richie already knows and is just… not acknowledging it right now? What if he’s waiting for Eddie to be stronger so he can just tear him to pieces? The man swallows, fingers tracing over Richie’s knuckles where he’s holding onto him.

That kills any indication of a hard-on Richie might have had, remembering _that_ conversation. “She said, uh… she said ‘I knew it,’ a lot. She, um… said that you were—” he breathes a laugh he doesn’t feel. “She said she knew you were sleeping with someone else, and that she knew all along, that it was with a— a man, and _I_ was thinking that I couldn’t believe you were sleeping with anybody at all. And then she something about AIDS, and that kinda blew out my eardrum so I didn’t hear much else after that. But she mentioned New York. That if I thought I’d gotten away with something, I hadn’t. That she knew you weren’t interested in the show. My show. Actually, she said you dragged her to the show and then didn’t laugh at any of it, and, fuckin’ look, dickwad, I know it’s not my own stuff, but honestly, Eds I’m hurt that you didn’t laugh. So. So yeah, I was pissed.” He’s bullshitting, entirely. In fact he remembers sitting in this very room, in the chair over there by the window, just holding that phone to his ear and thinking _with me? With me?_ Like why would Eddie… why would he… 

Without even knowing who Richie _was_? Who they’d been to each other all those years ago. “Why’d you come see the show, Eds?” he asks, all joking aside. “How’d you even find me?”

“Someone at work said they’d caught you and Vegas and I— I looked you up and— I don’t know. I just felt like I had to.” He shook his head, half laughing even as he scowls. “Jokes on her, then, really. Just because I wasn’t having sex with her doesn’t mean I was getting it elsewhere.” His fingers spasm against Richie’s, forehead resting against his shoulder. “I’m sorry she said that shit to you, dude. And if you’d written your own jokes I would have fucking laughed.” Instead of sitting with deep, unpleasant jealousy every time Richie spoke about girlfriends. And being confused about that. “You know, we didn’t even share a bed in the end?” He hadn’t even laid with anyone like this for years. “I’ve been in the spare room for about two years.”

“You pussy,” Richie whispers. Somehow it comes out affectionate. “You fucking loser.” He says it like a promise — Loser — and wraps his arm around him tighter, buries his fingers in Eddie’s hair which is ridiculously, stupidly soft. Next to him, Richie feels like he’s the one who just crawled out of a sewer. He showered this morning, but his hair’s riotous and he hasn’t been sleeping. He feels weird and spaced and shaky, still, and realizes he hasn’t eaten today, or since yesterday at lunch when he’d eaten half a banana and then gagged and tossed the rest. He presses his lips against Eddie’s forehead and whispers “Fucking loser,” again, and then thinks _I love you_ , and he doesn’t know if it’s his own thought or an echo of Eddie’s earlier. He can’t get it past his throat at any rate — it lodges there, and he feels his breath catch.

“Yeah and proud of it.” Eddie leans back into Richie’s fingers, eyes closing fully at the press of lips against his forehead, heaving a huge contented sigh. “I wish…” there’s so much he wishes. “I don’t know. Fuck it, right? At least we have now.” It doesn’t make up for the lost time but he’s grateful anyway. Brushes his lips so lightly against Richie’s collarbone that it could’ve been an accident.

Richie, _oh_ , inhales once through his nose, sharply and closes his eyes for a second. He’s taking these soft, shallow little breaths. “Yeah,” he says, and thinks _for how long?_ “Man, we’re gonna have some serious PTSD from this shit, I’m—” he curls his fingers in Eddie’s hair, sliding over the back of his skull. “I should book us a therapy sesh— session.” He wets his lips, changes the subject. “You warmer?” he asks, and swallows the dryness in his throat. It’s like his body is just catching up to this, where they are, how close they are. He thought he was here, already, but apparently he wasn’t. Apparently he was miles behind, and now he’s remembering the softness of the corner of Eddie’s mouth, still clean-shaven, somehow, like time stopped for him. But Richie feels like time’s been fucked up since the house crumbled into ruins on that lot. Since Eddie—

“Mm,” Eddie hums. And he’s practically purring at the caress of Richie’s fingers, at affection he hasn’t been allowed for so long. “Yeah I— I’m warm. And as for PTSD I mean. Yeah. We’re officially fucked up now, I think. Either no therapist would believe us or we’ll both be committed.” He laughs softly, finally taking his hand from Richie’s to press his fingers gently at the base of his neck.

Easy. So easy, this affection. The jokes. The quiet acknowledgment that he loves someone. He’s still capable of that. After a decade of not loving anyone and thinking himself broken. He can do it. He can love.

Richie breathes a laugh and flexes his fingers at the absence of that touch. He thinks that it would be so easy to just tug him forward by the back of the neck, now — with the arm looped beneath him, and kiss him again. He really, really fucking wants to because he thinks that that would do something to the ache in his chest. Or at least, it would re-centre his body to something simple and physical and present, except it wouldn’t, would it? Because it’s Eddie, and he’s scared to death of fucking it up, losing him some other way, other than death. Losing him again. So he doesn’t. He just lets his breath out shakily and thinks that one kiss can be passed off as terror and anxiety culminating in this weird, desperate outpouring, but two kisses can’t be explained away so easily.

_Why did you stop?_

Richie closes his eyes and just feels the soft, impossible press of Eddie’s fingers on the back of his neck. It’s a touch with purpose — not the absent-minded tumbling closeness of pre-teen boys. He exhales again, sighs, trying to relieve the tension inside him. He tries to time his breathing to Eddie’s.

_Why did you stop?_

He doesn’t know where to put his hand — the one Eddie’s not holding anymore, so he just lets it fall in the tiny space between them, between their hips and thighs, and that feels awkward, but he doesn’t move from there.

“Richie.” Eddie wants to ask him to put his hand back, and doesn’t. Wants to push his hips forward, but doesn’t. Instead he presses firmer with his fingers, bending the elbow under Richie so that he can hold himself against him. He does these things simply because it feels good. It feels so good. So warm. So safe. 

“Richie.” Again, the hand on Richie’s back smoothing over his shoulder muscle, his body trembling with the realisation of how fucking massive he is now. How could he have ever been scared with Richie next to him? “I missed you.”

“Me too,” he says, and it floods into him — finding a release now that Eddie’s here in his arms. Before, when he thought he was gone, that longing, that love, had nowhere to go. Now it—… “Shit,” Richie says, and breaks. Breaks into the kind of sobs he had when the house caved in upon itself. “Eddie,” he says, and draws his hand up to press against his eyes. “Eddie, fuck. I just found you again, and I thought—” he stops. He can’t keep talking with the way his breath tangles itself between his ribs. He’s trying so hard not to cry that he keeps choking on it and presses his wrist against his mouth.

“Hey, hey, hey.” And when he thought they couldn’t get any closer, Eddie somehow manages it. He fists his hand in Richie’s shirt, one leg hooking over his hips and body twisting until they’re completely flush together, grabbing the back of his head so that he can cry into Eddie’s shoulder. “It’s alright. It’s alright. I’m here. I’m right here.” He echoes Richie from earlier, peppering kisses over his hairline, forgetting himself in his need to comfort the man. “You’re stuck with me, okay? This is it now. I’m not going back to New York. I’m going with you.” Like there was any question of where he would go.

And Richie just nods against him because of course he is. Of course they’re sticking together, after everything, and he tries not to think of how scary it is that he doesn’t know what happens if they leave Derry now. They’ll all still remember each other, right? Now that It’s dead, they’ll remember, still. He mirrors Eds, hand tight in his hair. God, they’re so fucking close, and it feels like the hammock in summer, except it’s worse somehow, and also better. “Would it be crazy if I kissed you right now?” he asks, and then absolutely does wipe his nose on Eddie’s shoulder — it’s his own sweater anyway, he reminds himself.

“I _totally_ want to kiss you when you’re disgusting and snotty.” But he’s grinning, heart pounding straight out of his chest, butterflies erupting in his stomach, untangling his hand so that Richie can lift his head.

“I think I’ll probably have to smother you with your own pillows if you don’t, though.” Because god, it’s all he wants, licking his lips as his mouth waters at the thought. “Not sure how I’d make it look like an accident. The headline will say ‘bastard comedian gets what was coming to him by refusing to kiss childhood friend’.”

Richie laughs, wetly, and meets his eyes. “You’re very blurry,” he tells him, and thinks _now’s when you kiss him_ , but he can’t. He’s fucking terrified. He’s spent a lifetime thinking that he was… wrong. So he hedges. “Should we take our shirts off, first?” he asks. “You seemed to be particularly interested in that in the restaurant. Is that a prerequisite to the kissing or, just uh… optional?”

“That tends to happen when you look at someone without your glasses, dickhead.” And he has to be brave. He _has_ to. So he takes Richie’s hand and puts it back - back on that strip of skin, and guides it up. Over the dip of his waist, under his sweater.

Under Richie’s sweater.

“ _If you want me naked you undress me your damn self, Trashmouth._ ”

When Eddie takes his hand, Richie exhales, lips parting. Kind of feels like he’s just gazing at him with this probably extremely gormless, myopic expression on his face which cannot be attractive. His nose is still running. He sniffles, and has to close his mouth to do that, at least. And all he can feel is the heat of Eddie’s skin beneath his hand, the soft heat of Eddie’s stomach, the catch of Richie’s fingertips over the bottom of his ribs. The whole, healed flesh of the centre of him — the warmth there.

_“If you want me naked you undress me your damn self, Trashmouth.”_

That jolts him down to the very centre. He laughs once, exhales it silently, and then kisses him on the mouth, properly. Kisses him wanting and open. He tastes like clean water, which might be the shower or might just be Eddie, but Richie feels like it’s the former, like he’s missing something inherent to _him_. He wants it, wants to find it. He has to inhale through his nose, hard, as something electric shoots through him, and rolls Eddie onto his back. He laps at the inside of his mouth and groans against his mouth and for once — for one fucking second that rolls into two, then three… he feels like this is a piece that fits, and not a piece of barbed wire wrapped around his heart — _don’t touch the other boys_ —

“ _Richie_.” It’s sighed against his lips as he’s rolled - manhandled, bodily, thrillingly - onto his back, his legs parting on instinct to make room for him. He knows in the very bones of him that he’ll spend his life making room for Richie. What else could he ever do?

With his hand secure on his body it leaves his own free to cup Richie’s jaw - at last! That fucking jaw! — to run through his hair fully, kissing him back with everything he’s held inside for twenty-seven years, mouth open and wet against his, breathing heavy through his nose. Eddie rolls his body up to press them together again, hand fisting in his hair, teeth biting at his bottom lip, his tongue, kissing him like he needs it to breathe.

Which he suspects he does, at this point. And then his hands are moving on their own, finding the hem of his shirt - the waistband of his pants - pulling it from where it’s trapped and sliding cold hands up his stomach and chest.

“Richie, Richie.” So soft, so gentle, breaking the kiss to look up at him, to grin, to pull him down again. “Richie.”

For his part, Richie can’t keep up, he can’t. He’s got this pulse inside him like a second heartbeat, and he’s ridiculously, impossibly hard already. Like even if his mind forgot, his body didn’t. Like he’s never forgotten that he needed to find all the ways to hold Eddie Kaspbrak against his own body. Like he’s never forgotten how. “Oh jesus,” he says, and then, teasingly “I mean, Eddie. Oh Eddie,” it’s a parody, and he’s smiling wickedly, wildly, and then they’re kissing again and he doesn’t know which one of them pulled the other this time. Is this the third time or the fourth? The fifth? He can’t remember, he doesn’t know anymore. And he doesn’t hitch his hips away this time, even though he can feel himself press against his own fly, against this soft place between Eddie’s hip and his pubic bone, where there is no purchase, no leverage. “Jesus fucking—” he breathes against his lips. He thinks _don’t let go._

Eddie says “ _Please_.” With more desperation than he’s ever felt before, hips canting up against him, one leg wrapping around his hips so he can grind against him. “Richie. Please, please.” He can’t even acknowledge that Richie is being a shit, because he’s covered in him. All he can taste, feel, smell, hear is Richie. It settles heavy in his chest like a fire blanket, and he lets out a choked off sob at how fucking _good_ he feels.

He wants to make Richie feel this good, takes it almost as an insult that Richie is still able to get one over on him, growls softly against his mouth. Grabs one hand in his to lace their fingers together, holding it firmly beside his head, moving until it feels like Richie is pinning him with it while the other makes short work of his fly. Richie is burning hot against his palm, the material of his boxers damp already, and honestly Eddie could come just from that knowledge. But he doesn’t. He just ruts against Richie’s thigh and whimpers against his lips, hand wrapping around his dick through his underwear.

Richie twists, arches, makes this sound that would be embarrassing if he gave a shit about anything anymore that isn’t just getting closer to the man beneath him. For a second he wishes he kept his glasses on so that he could see him, see what his face looks like, but he doesn’t think the kiss would even break for that long. He scrambles a little to figure this out, to simultaneously hold him down, and give him something to press against, and get Eddie’s fingers — fuck, his fingers — harder around his cock. It’s a lot at once. 

“God, Eds— Jesus fucking Christ, hmm—” he’s silenced by the kiss, by his own lack of fucking air. He kisses him so hard their teeth clatter. “Fuck—”

_Fuck it._ Eddie thinks. He gets his hand up and over the waist of his boxers, around him fully, and he knows that the noise he lets out is ridiculous, high pitched and wanton. There’s just so much of it— of _him_ , of Richie. His mouth is still watering.“ _Fuck_.” He agrees brokenly, tears blurring the edges of his vision, because sex has never been this good. It was always just something that he did. But then, this is Richie. His Richie. Quite possibly the love of his pathetic little life.

“If you don’t fuck me tonight we can’t be friends anymore.” He settles on, because he doesn’t know how to beg for it the way he wants to.

Richie laughs wildly and scrabbles for the hem of Eddie’s sweater — _his_ sweater, and pulls him up enough so that he can pull it off. It’s inelegant to the highest degree. They both lose their balance a little. The headboard rattles against the wall. He tosses it somewhere and then he’s kneeling over him, one of his legs between Eddie’s legs. He reaches down to touch him through his— through his sweatpants. No underwear, just the soft worn fabric and Eddie — his cock against the curve of Richie’s hand. “You sh— should get your eyes checked again,” he says, and then drops his head down and runs his tongue over the line of his throat. It feels, somehow… so easy. And he has no idea how the few inches that used to linger between their hands as kids felt so impossibly far away. He thinks about how they would walk — their group — and how every so often he would find himself not beside Bill or Stanley or Bev or Mike, or Ben, but beside Eddie instead. How their hands would brush sometimes, tangle messily, always always accidentally, as they walked or messed around. He remembers, once, shouting _“Ew, ew!”_ cruelly. It comes back to him in this flood. _“Cooties. Eddie’s mom’s cooties! They’re all over you, get away from me, back back!”_ and pretending to ward him off with a stick he’d dragged out of the undergrowth nearby.

He thinks about how— fuck, it’s all coming back now. Just now— about how he’d slept with a girl because she had dark eyes like that, impossibly dark and warm and soft. And how he’d looked at her, into her eyes, while they fucked with such intensity that she never called him again. He thinks about how once, at thirteen, he’d gone to the fucking bathroom at school because gym had been outside and too hot and Eddie’s hair was damp with sweat and he’d pulled his shirt up to wipe his face — that glimmer of sweat from his freckled nose, his upper lip, and exposed this expanse of abdomen and hips and Richie had been stopped dead in his fucking tracks. Like he’d just walked into a door.

Eddie says “Don’t fucking start.” But he’s laughing breathlessly, lifting his hips to get the sweatpants off too, desperate to feel as much of Richie as he possibly could. Pulls him in by his shoulders to kiss him so hard he feels his mouth bruise, and doesn’t think about the boys he’d been with at college. The way his body had sought Richie without him knowing. Licks deeply into his mouth and nibbles at his tongue, moving until he’s in the man's lap with his legs spread over his thighs. “ _Fuck_ you look so good.” Quietly, against his lips, squirming to just— feel more. Pushes the memories of _church_ and _sin_ from his mind and tangles his hands in Richie’s hair to pull his head back, to kiss along that endless jaw, down the column of his neck. Thinks instead about how he’d wanted this at the restaurant, about how all Richie had done was _appear_ and everything in him had slotted into place; how the vision of him bending him over the table had been unbidden and raw. 

“I love you.” Murmured against Richie’s ear as his body moves, still grinding, naked and unashamed.

And, _Don’t_ , Richie thinks, because Eddie, who could be as volatile and foul-mouthed as the rest of them, had never said the kind of shit he did when they were young. Had never shied away from contact or worried about looking like a fag. Not like Richie did. And he can’t say it back, not yet. Instead he says, to the ceiling, because Eddie’s hands are still in his hair: “Once I thought you looked so fucking beautiful, I went to the bathroom at school and fucking—” he laughs and continues, voice low. “Pulled myself off.” What he doesn’t say: _the way you looked in that restaurant made my fucking throat ache._ The distance in time, in age — between then and now — makes it safer, when they were younger.

And somehow he’s ended up here, his back is to the headboard, his glasses shoved off to the side, and Eddie’s over him, but hardly taller. “I kept talking myself out of it, but I’ve always—” he gasps sharply, and then licks his own palm, slicking it wet before he slides it hard and tight over Eddie’s dick because, fuck, if he’s going to keep spilling his guts, he wants to see Eddie losing it, too. He wants to take him apart. “Are you gonna take my shirt off, or do I have to do everything around here?”

“Ohh I’m Big Dick Richie Tozier and all I do is bitch at the people who want to suck me off.” Eddie teases, eyes going hazy and lips parting at his words, his touch, hips lifting into his hand and head tilting back.

He wants to play at that game? They can play that game.

“Myra thought we were sleeping together because she caught me fingering myself to one of your shows.” A hot breathless rush, grin feral on his face, pulling his shirt off so that he can rake his nails down his back. “It remains one of the best orgasms I’ve ever had.”

Richie’s glad there’s that brief interim so he can digest that little parcel of information. He lets Eddie go to get out of his shirt, and it’s this rush of soft sound and light fabric and then it’s just Eddie again, soft around the edges, and the coolness of the room. He thinks that when he’s thought about stuff like this — when he’s let himself think — it’s always been mouths and cocks, and someone’s hands against him. He’s never actually thought about — okay well now he’s thinking about it — Eddie’s hand between his own shaking legs as he pushed slender fingers inside himself. He wonders if he shakes when he comes, he wonders if he can fucking make him. 

“Is that what you want?” Richie asks. “You want me to fuck you with my,” he starts to grin because it’s hilarious, on some level — tomfoolery. “With my big dick, Kaspbrak?”

Way too cocky, Rich thinks, considering he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing, or how to touch another man, inside. But maybe Eddie doesn’t have to know that. He leans close and kisses him hard, then lifts his hips and gets his pants down, his underwear off. He’s already wet enough that some of that clear liquid slides down his cock — almost like a touch — all the way to the base. He presses upward, meeting air, because Eddie’s hands are on his back. He thinks he’s never been so turned on in his whole fucking life. He thinks he wants to say he’s never done any of this with any man ever, but when he opens his mouth again he doesn’t say any of that. He leans forward and says against his mouth, “Or you want to see what my mouth can do?” then slides his tongue over Eddie’s before he can say anything back. “What do you want?”

“Yes.” Is what he growls in response, teeth coming together on the very tip of his tongue gently, because what kind of question is _what do you want_ when he has exactly what he wants between his legs? He just wants and wants and wants. Everything. Anything Richie suggests. Eddie lets out a slow, trembling breath and sits up properly, leans back to take him all in. He feels starved of it, of this immaculate view, of planes and angles he hasn’t been allowed in twenty years. His hands return to Richie’s chest, fingers combing through the hair there, bottom lip bitten between his teeth. “This feels too fucking good to be true.” Shakes his head, kissing the mans shoulder. “Far too good, fuck.” 

Because this is Richie. This is his first wet dream. This is the reason he cried like a baby leaving Derry. This is the reason he’d died — so that Richie would live. He watches Richie’s cock — watches it leak precome, eyes almost black in the gloom, and while he knows his back will hate him for it later (because he’s fucking forty years old and his dick sucking days are far behind him) he still leans down to lick it up.

Richie lets out this keening sound, his head falling back against the headboard, hands grasping for purchase on something. Eddie’s hair, his shoulder. He never pushes him down, just holds him with this tenuous, shaky grip. “Fucking Christ,” he breathes, “Eds—” his breath hitches and he tenses up so hard, so that he doesn’t buck upwards. “Please oh fuck.” This, he thinks, isn’t even Eddie’s mouth, it’s just his tongue, his warm breath. He reaches up and presses one hand over his eyes, drags it down over his face. “Eddie.”

Eddie thinks: _Okay, it’s worth it just for that_. “This is what you get for being a prick.” But really it’s not much incentive for Richie to be less of a dick, because he’s slithering to lay on his stomach. Keeping himself steady with his forearms flat and folded under his chest, mouth opening over the head of Richie’s cock as his cheeks hollow and he sucks gently. He runs his tongue along the underside, looking up at his face through his eyelashes, smirking a little. 

“Are you gonna make me do all the work?” He repeats Richie’s words, still smirking as he reaches up to guide a hand to the back of his head before taking him back into his mouth. It’s amazing. Addictive. The way he smells musky with sweat and soap, the way he tastes like salt and skin and _Richie_. He whines low in the back of his throat and looks up at him again.

_Is this_ , Richie wonders, _really happening,_ because he’s used to unreal things in Derry being terrible, horrifying things. Maybe he’d think about it, but that mouth is already sliding over him again, and Richie pushes him down, fingers tangling in his hair. When Eddie whines, he _feels_ it, vibrating around his cock and he opens his eyes just as Eddie looks up. Richie swears he almost comes right there, with those brown eyes on him, and that mouth — so familiar, achingly familiar, around him. “You’re doing a _great_ job on your own,” he retorts, only it comes out so breathless and unsteady that he almost laughs. He might if he wasn’t so fucking close already, and there’s no way — no way in hell he’s about to come a handful of minutes in like some teenager. He pushes him back, gentle, but almost too suddenly, reaching down to wrap his fingers around the base of his cock. “Jesus—” he grits out, and — thank Christ for small mercies — doesn’t come. “C’mere,” he says and pulls Eddie up, one hand tangled in his hair, and kisses him, tastes his own salt on Eddie’s tongue and shivers. With his free hand he reaches down and grips Eddie’s thigh, slides his hand up over his ass. How — how would he touch him? How would he do it, if Eddie let him. Richie thinks he half wants him to come with his fingers inside him — thinks that’s less overwhelming, somehow, than actually fucking him.

_What?_ Eddie thinks, and then“What?” Like he’s dick-drunk already, sweating, face flushed, mouth hanging open and wet. And then Richie’s hand is on his thigh, on his ass, and he whimpers. Spreads his legs again filthy, blinking slowly at him. It hits him all at once — Richie hasn’t done this before. He’s not sure what to do with anything because he hasn’t done this with a man before. It’s so sweet it makes him dizzy, laying down next to him to curl into his side, kissing him slow and deep. For now, he’s happy to let Richie explore. Hitches a leg up over his hip and smiles. “You taste amazing, just so you know.” Soft against his mouth.

“Suck a lot of cock, do you?” Richie whispers huskily. Can’t deny the fact that his fingers closed tighter in Eddie’s hair when he thought he was about to pull away. He slides his fingers from the base of his tailbone, and follows Eddie’s body down to his thigh. He presses his fingers up against the place just behind his balls, presses softly like y _ou know how this will feel just before you come?_ He twists away and slides two fingers into his mouth to make them wet. Wet enough that there’s this string of clear saliva that trails from his lower lip to his fingers.

Briefly, he thinks _I know your secret, your dirty little secret…_ it almost seems to dim the light in the room — the light that only comes from the lamp on the far table, near the telephone. It’s at his back, that light, illuminating Eds more than hiding him.

“Not recently.” Eddie shivers against him, body lighting up at the touch, leaning up and in to lick the saliva from Richie’s mouth and then take his fingers into his mouth as well, rubbing their noses together as he does. “I feel like a fucking teenager again, Rich.” He giggles, he fucking giggles like a girl. “Fuck, just—. Whatever you want. It’s yours.” He means it, too, eyes wide and clear, looking up at the way that his face is shadowed like this. “Everything feels so good.”

“Then I am so, so sorry about your previous sexual encounters,” Richie tells him. “I mean, I haven’t slept with anyone in… a while,” he murmurs it while he trails spit-slick fingers over his skin, finds his entrance and _presses_ , but doesn’t press inside. Not yet. His hands are shaking, which is ridiculous. Very very carefully, he slips one finger inside, and _Christ_ , it’s tight. Tighter than he expected. He makes a sound and kisses him quickly to muffle it. “Last person was—” he swallows a moan. “Uh, your mom, so…”

_Is this okay?_ Richie wonders. _Is this what it felt like when you touched yourself to my show?_ He imagines Eds in a dark room, soft blue television light, mouth open and dark the way it is, now. “Hey, did you come before or after your _wife_ walked in on you?” he asks, pushing deeper inside.

“Before, you fucked up weirdo.” But it’s slurred, his body going boneless as he relaxes around him, head falling back against the pillow as he looks up at him. “What, you think I saw Myra’s face with three fingers in me and I went ‘oh shit that’s hot’ when you were fucking— I don’t even know, it was a dick joke anyway. You were doing Voices.” He pushes back on the fingers and his eyelashes flutter, moaning and whining as he moves. “You did one that was like— was it fucking James Spader or something? It was a low one and I— yeah.”

What feels like the entire lower half of Richie’s body just _clenches_ , and he laughs because that’s so fucking hot and he doesn’t know what to do with it. He supposes he could fucking just— he finds one of Eddie’s hands and draws it down to his cock, but doesn’t force him to touch — that seems distasteful. Instead he ghosts Eddie’s fingers over his stomach and arches his hips forward, wanting, asking. 

“You want me to do a Voice, Eds?” he asks. He asks it in that voice Eddie’s talking about. He thinks he even knows which bit Eddie’s talking about and so he rehearses a line, says it word for word, because he apparently remembers his lines only when he’s offstage these days. With his free hand, letting go of Eddie’s wrist, he reaches down to touch him. He’s got his middle finger buried to the first knuckle in his heat, and his other hand wrapped around his cock which is almost as hot — feverish. He pushes deeper inside, and Eddie’s trusting enough around him that it’s two fingers now, at the same time as he slicks his hand down to the base of his cock. Richie’s breath shakes from his lungs and then he says, in his Spanish Custodian voice — the one he’d used in the tunnel when they were kids “Anything else I can do for you, señor?”

“Yeah, never do that one in b-bed again.” But Eddie gets the hint, how could he not? He wraps his hand around the base of Richie’s cock and squeezes gently. Drags his hand up. Pushes it down. Buries his face in Richie’s neck and shudders as he works him open with his fingers.

Eddie has always enjoyed this. Being full. Having something to ground and centre him. “Richie…” breathed as he presses against him. “Fuck, there, please. Please.”

Richie chuckles softly, but it slips seamlessly into a moan, and for about the ten thousandth time, he wishes that he’d kept his glasses on. Now he has no idea where they even are anymore — lost amongst the bedclothes, or about to be crushed by one of them, probably. “You love it,” he says, as he pulls back to look at him anyway as he fucks him slowly with his fingers, pressing as deeply as Eds wants. He gets this sort of genius idea and reaches down, messing with Eddie’s fingers until his lovely delicate hand is circling both their cocks. Richie wraps his own fingers over Eddie’s, making him hold on tighter, until they’re pressed together in the joint circle of their palms. 

This has the slight inconvenience of not allowing Richie to hold onto him anywhere else. He half thinks he wants to slide his fingers into Eddie’s mouth again, but he doesn’t have enough hands and he half feels like if he thinks about it too hard, in Derry, he’d fucking grow one, so he just kisses him instead, messy and breathless. 

The noises Eddie makes are high, desperate and fucked out already, the colour on his cheeks and mouth mirroring the head of his cock, wanting to drink Richie down.“Richie, please.” Against his lips, tongue flicking out to run along the mans bottom one, hips stuttering between the grip they’d made together and the length of his fingers, eyes lidded as he looked up at him. He’d thought about this for so long that the reality of it was overwhelming. “Not gonna— can’t keep this up, fuck, it’s too good.”

Richie can’t even look at him anymore, it’s too much. It’s way too fucking much, even through the soft haze of his shit vision. He’s found a rhythm now, the sounds Eddie’s making helping him with that, helping him feel like he’s not going to be utterly incompetent. “Yeah?” he breathes. “You want to fucking come for me, hm? Come on my dick…” saying it aloud, words he’s thought in too many illicit fantasies — ones that made him feel sort of nauseous afterwards, and hollow — it nearly drives him straight over the edge now. He’s already slipped his fingers out of him to spit on them a second time since they began, and somehow he’s still impossibly tight, despite the soft, slick sounds it makes as he moves. “Eddie,” he breathes, and he squeezes his fingers tighter over Eddie’s between their bodies. “Christ, Eddie,” Fucking _Eds_ , his Eddie, his best friend — the fucking— the first genuine crush he ever had, the one that never left, only grew stronger as time passed. Almost like it was germinating in the dark, all those years he didn’t remember him, or Derry, or growing up.

Eddie tenses, body going even tighter on his fingers, pressing his face into his collarbone to sob brokenly, nodding as hard and fast as he can. Because. Because yes. That’s what he wants. That’s what he wanted as a teenager, ashamed and hot under his sheets, imagining Richie opening him up just like this. Imagining the blur of strong hands bruising him, of fingers knuckle deep in his mouth, of Richie biting and marking and—. He gasps against his skin, shudders, whines, trying always to get closer. He wants to be on his back, on his hands and knees, straddling him - anything, anything as long as it’s Richie. His legs shake, spare hand clawing at his shoulder, the movement knocking tiny moans from his throat. “I-I-I—.” He sounds like Bill. “I’ve wanted this for years, Richie. Please, please.” Because he has. Can remember looking at him on stage and thinking _god I want to taste him_ , and not looking at Myra. Not being able to laugh because he was so fucking turned on.

_Me too_ , Richie thinks, but those words — the true ones — they don’t come. Instead he whispers “Come for me, Eds,” and pretends his voice doesn’t just _shake_ through it. “Come on, I want to fucking feel you. He lets go of Eddie’s hand, their cocks, and just grasps the back of his neck, holding him close, hitching their bodies a little bit closer. “Come on—” he whispers in his ear, voice hot and trembling. His fucking breath shakes, and he doesn’t know how much longer _he’s_ going to be able to hold out. 

It’s embarrassing, the way Eddie’s body clenches and trembles, dick twitching as his neck and back arch, white ribbons of come shuddering out of him as he comes untouched. 

But it’s Richie, so what else did he expect?

Richie feels him clench around him, the pulsing of his orgasm and that’s enough, that pushes him over the edge, with Eddie’s fingers wrapped around his cock — he leans into him as he cries out sharply, mouth wet and open against Eddie’s neck as he gasps and gasps. He comes, and it’s just a release. 

Eddie can feel the ache in his thighs and lower back, body loosening and relaxing around him as Richie fucks him through it with his fingers. “Richie.” he says, soft.

Richie has to reach down and push Eddie’s fingers away from him because it’s almost too intense. He shakes and shakes, and can’t stop, but it isn’t getting off that makes him feel that way, it’s just everything else— it’s the fucking culmination of all of this. Of Eddie, here, in his arms, in his _bed_ — or not his bed, but the one he’s paying for. Eddie, twenty-seven years on. Eddie fucking showing up at his door, earlier this afternoon, Eddie fucking _alive_. 

Sighing softly, Eddie leans down to lick the mess off of Richie’s chest, then gripes on the bedside table to grab a handful of tissues. “Richie.” Still soft, still treacle sweet, shuffling until Richie can hold him. “Fuck, Richie.” He can’t believe this. Can’t believe he was allowed this. He was never allowed anything he really wanted. “Fuck, I love you. I wish I’d told you then.”

_There it is again_ , thinks Richie, those words. Impossible, like a fucking dream. He reaches for some more tissues and cleans up what Eddie didn’t, he looks at him, holding a fistful of kleenex and feeling— “Yeah,” Richie says and then, “Can you see my glasses over there?” and it’s cruel. It’s the same cruel as Eddie’s cooties when they were kids — the soft, sweat-damp tangle of his fingers in Richie’s for a moment, but he doesn’t know how not to be. He doesn’t know how to do this, when everything is so new and so strange, still. 

And maybe part of him always knew that he and Eddie had always had something special, something the other boys didn’t — Bev not included, she and Bill, that was always their thing when they were young. But with the _boys_ , it was always Eds and him ribbing on each other the most. Just the way it was twenty-seven years later in the restaurant. 

Eddie feels hurt flash through him, hot like shame, making him sit up and pull Richie’s sweater back on. The exhaustion in his bones makes him ache. So he sits on the edge of the bed, pulls the sweat pants on too, curls bare toes on the carpet. “Where are you keeping your socks? I’ll run my shit down to housekeeping before it gets too late.”

Spotting his glasses, behind Eddie, Richie tries not to breathe him in as he reaches for them. He feels like his heart is beating into a tin, he feels so fucked up and fragile. And suddenly Eddie’s getting dressed and he knows he’s fucked up. “I’ll go,” he says, “you should stay here… your picture was in the paper. The obituaries. It’s a small town. “ he tells him, like Eddie doesn’t know. He finds himself up and dressed, too, pulling his pants on and fastening them, too loose about his hips without a belt. He finds a pair of his balled up socks in his suitcase and tosses them Eddie’s way and isn’t surprised when he doesn’t quite make the catch. He’s being an asshole. Fuck, fuck. And then all he can do is stand here, with his back to the lamplight, in the growing dark, and try to think up how to fix it.

“It’s Derry.” Eddie counters, standing too, arms folded. “No ones gonna fucking notice.” He doesn’t make the catch because he doesn’t try, lets the socks hit the wall behind his head, eyes flint black in the dark. 

“So you can face a fucking clown and you can fuck me with your fingers but you can’t stand to look at me, Tozier? Harsh, dude.”

Richie looks back at him, dead serious for a moment, his eyes flickering like he’s trying to spear one really good joke, one good crack to fix all this, but he can’t. He feels like they’ve switched fucking places, and _he’s_ the one having trouble breathing. “It’s not th—” he laughs, because it’s so fucking unreal, all of it. “It’s not that, man, it’s—” his breath slips out of his control faster than he can even get the sentence out. “It’s that I’m afraid that if you walk out that door I’ll never _see_ you again,” he said, swinging one long arm towards the door. “Or it’ll be _another_ twenty-seven years, I don’t know. I thought you were _dead_ until three hours ago, you absolute fucking prick. And maybe you were. I thought you were fucking dead, and in the goddamn cistern I kept thinking ‘when we get outta here, I’m going to kiss him. In front of everybody, so that he fucking _knows how I feel_.’ Only you didn’t get out. You just showed up here weeks later like— _Jesus,_ man... 

“I’m looking at you now,” he says, and it’s much softer, but still a retort — _you can’t even look at me._ “I’m looking at you, I’ve always—” sharp breath: inhale, exhale. “I’ve always been fucking looking at you, Eddie.”

“Then fucking _do something about it_ rather than acting like a _goddamn pussy._ ” Eddie snaps. He wants to hit him. Wants to hit him and keep hitting until all the weight in his chest is gone. “Oh I’m _so fucking sorry_ my absence was difficult for you, fuck, I’m a cunt, right?” Glares at him, hackles raised, voice strangled. “I’m _really fucking sorry_ that I threw a fence post at the demon thing that was gonna eat you, asshole, Jesus.” Throws his hands up, and starts gathering his filthy clothes. The towel. Anything to busy his shaking hands. “It must have been so _hard_ for you, sitting here on your hands while I was fucking dead. Don’t you think if I weren’t I wouldn’t have fucking shown up here today? That it would have been fucking hours after you left instead of weeks? Fuck you.” He’s so angry he could spit, kicking hard at the mini bar with his bare feet.

“Fuck you, Richie, I don’t know why the _fuck_ the way you feel has to be my responsibility. I’m telling you the fucking way I feel now because yeah, fuck it, what if it ends up being another twenty-seven years? What if I let you just _go on thinking you’re not loved by me_ for another three decades?”

Richie moves. He _does something about it_ , grabbing hold of Eddie by the arm and pulling him around. He pushes him back into the mini-bar he kicked and fucking kisses him hard, once, and then draws back to pull all of the things Eddie’s collected out of his hands. Richie throws them onto the floor and then grabs his face in both hands, meeting those liquid dark eyes. “I do fucking love you, what do you want me to say? I’m still _catching up_.” This is definitely going wrong, but then he’s always said the worst thing at the worst time, his friends always just a half-step away from clapping their hands over his mouth to get him to _shut the fuck up for once in your life, Trashmouth._ Beep beep Richie. “God damn it, Eds,” he says, stroking one thumb over his cheek, beneath those impossible eyelashes. 

And Eddie still wants to hit him, but this—. This sends a dirty thrill through him, the way the small of his back hits the counter and shoots pain up his spine. Richie’s hands solid and gentle on his face. Too gentle. Eddie wants more. More feeling, more passion, more Richie, so he shoves him hard in the chest.

Then follows him, fisting his hands in his collar.

“ _You’re_ still catching up, dickwad? I’ve been fucking married to my mother for a decade and you’re still catching up? Pull the other fucking leg, dude, it rattles.” He snarls, lets go of him, panting and waiting. Hoping for more of that roughness.

“Whatever,” Richie says, once he’s regained his footing, once Eddie’s fingers are knotted in his shirt at his throat. He’s sort of shocked, that Eddie’s got so much strength in him — this genuine fury, or… something like it. He takes his chances — he _feels_ like he’s about to get hit — and steps close, kissing him again, fingers along the underside of Eddie’s jaw, tipping his face harshly up. “I’d rather pull something else,” he says — he can’t fucking help it — and he laughs softly against his mouth, but it’s tight and breathless.

Every pleasure receptor in Eddie’s brain fires at once, chin tipping further up, hand flying to catch him around the wrist, pupils visibly blowing. “Fuck you.” Is what he says instead of _please_ , because he’s asked enough and made himself very clear. Presses Richie’s hand down against his throat and opens his mouth against his lips.

Richie makes a questioning sound into the kiss, but he feels Eddie’s heart beating straight into his fingertips, pulse beating, alive. “You want to fuck me?” he asks, misunderstanding on purpose, then laps at his mouth. “You’d be the first.” He slides his thumb over the hard rise of his adam’s apple, just the hint of pressing down. 

Eddie’s embarrassed of the tiny noise of pleasure that leaves him, both hands fisting in his shirt.

“You’re an asshole. You’re a fucking asshole.” Slurred, biting at his tongue, his lips, dragging until their teeth click again. The press of Richie’s fingers has him tingling, brain going fuzzy with lust and something else - something darker and gentler. Pushes his fists hard ( _against the posts_ ) on Richie’s chest, still wanting to fight, still wanting Richie.

One hand on Eddie’s throat, the other on the back of his head, Richie squeezes, just a little, just an experiment, and draws back from the kiss so he can actually see him. His eyes are wide and dark and uncertain, mouth wet and bruised from the kiss, falling open as he catches his breath. His gazes flickers down to Eddie’s mouth, remembers how it felt on his cock. Eddie tastes like water and like salt and neither of those, he thinks, seem right. The water is from the taps and the salt is his own. He wants to know how _Eddie_ tastes. “You’re the motherfucking asshole,” he says. Not his best work. He steps back, pulling Eds with him, until his leg hits the bedside table and he stumbles slightly, his back to the wall. 

“I’m the fucking asshole who crawled out of a sewer to be with you,” Eddie says. But it’s weak, knees trembling as they knock against Richie’s, staring up at him. Brings one hand up to clasp his wrist again, to push for more pressure, the other hitting him gently against where his heart beats.

And he kisses him again, craning up for it, leaning his body tight against him. 

“I’m the fucking asshole who saw you in the Deadlights and couldn’t let you down again.” Against his mouth as his chest hitches, all the anger leaving him in breathless stolen moments against Richie’s lips.

_You’ve never fucking let me down_ , Richie thinks, eyes squeezed tightly shut. His fucking glasses are in the way. He kisses him back, and it seems to go on for fucking ever, his fingers around Eddie’s throat, feeling that pulse, that assurance that he’s here, alive, safe. Safe as houses fucking aren’t. 

He realizes he’s practically holding him up, and says “Here,” and pulls Eddie back down onto the bed, both of them sort of hitting it sideways. He climbs over him, Eddie’s legs hanging down. Richie knees on either side of his hips and he looks down at him. He isn’t touching him otherwise — just sharp knees against sharp hips, but then he touches his throat, both hands wrapping around Eddie’s neck but not pressing. “You’re fucking into this?” he asks, genuinely curious. “You already hard for me again, Kaspbrak?” he asks, and his face breaks into a smile. His glasses are smudged from the kiss. He looks wild-haired and half-freaked, still; and wanting. He looks like he’s thinking _will you still be here by morning?_ in more ways than one.

Eddie nods, feels his face flush and swallows, breath coming in sharp gasps. “No I just thought _hey you know what would be hilarious? If I got Richie to choke me out for no reason_.” He could push him off, he could push him off and sulk but god, god he doesn’t want to. Pushes his hips up instead so he can feel.

His hands are laying beside his head, one on each side, and his face is set. Determined. Gaze entirely focused on Richie. “I’m into a lot of things.” Like a dare, lifting his hand to fit against his elbow. “A _lot_ of things.”

“Yeah? Prove it,” he tells him, pressing down harder with both hands, totally controlled. He’s not leaning into him, but he could. He wouldn’t, but he can pretend. “Show me, then. Or are you a fuckin’ pussy?” he asks, slipping into a Voice. It sounds an awful lot like Richie Trashmouth at fourteen, cocksure, softly nasal, just dicking around. 

He lets go of his throat with one hand to smear his thumb over Eddie’s lower lip, and whispers, involuntarily “Christ,” because his mouth is wet and red and he wants — oh fuck — he wants so much

So Eddie opens his mouth, not breaking eye contact as he takes his thumb between his lips and bites down. Just on the edge of hard, of painful, tongue lathing over the skin as he sucks. “I tried but you stopped me.” Around the digit, Eddie arches his neck so Richie presses harder. Like Richie, he wants _so much_. Spreads his legs against the bed and lifts his hips again. “And you fingered me open and _didn’t_ fuck me. So you’re the pussy.”

So there.

Richie thinks that it doesn’t hurt as much as having his hand cut open. He takes a breath that feels steadying and says: “Then fucking get undressed, idiot” before he reaches up to pull off his own shirt once again. It knocks his glasses askew. He reaches up with both hands to fix them. It sort of destroys the effect.

“Make me.” Eddie fires back, taking the opportunity to sit up, to flip their positions so he’s pinning Richie down. Why being around Richie makes his brain devolve into being a bratty little prick, he doesn’t want to examine. He just knows that he wants to act up around him. Push at buttons he knows are there to get a reaction. “Or are you too much of a pussy?” He steals his Voice from him, smirking down from where he’s sat across his hips.

So Richie rocks his hips up, too hard, almost unseating him. Then he cackles about it, because he’s being a bastard on purpose, trying to pitch him forward. “Oops, what happened?”

“You won’t be fucking laughing when I headbutt you so hard your skull cracks and your brain falls out.” He growls, then yelps as Richie succeeds in flipping him upwards. By some miracle he doesn’t bash heads with him, instead tumbling onto the mattress at an awkward angle and then rolling off the bed.

“Fucking _ouch_.”

Richie, laughing follows him down, messily — clambering over him — and for an instant they’re boys, wrestling. He pins his arms onto the scratchy carpet and holds his eyes instead of looking at the yawning darkness of Beneath the Bed and said “Fucking got you,” before he kisses him, softer than he should, softer than the tackle warrants. It’s all yearning, and he makes this soft sound against his mouth. With one hand, he reaches down to grasp his thigh, pulling his leg up to his hip as he slots his hips against Eddie’s and drags fabric against fabric. He’s barely half-hard, but he just came, so he’ll forgive himself. It already feels like it won’t take long, now.

Eddie moans, he can’t help it, something deep in him reacting animalistically to Richie pinning him down. Fucking got you. And Eddie nods, legs parting and lifting to wrap around his hips, grinding upwards. He shivers, all over, body and brain so cold with the realisation. He likes it. He fucking likes it. And yeah, sure, he’d suspected, but—.

“You can be rough.” Because Ma never let him. Never let him wrestle, roughhouse, _get hurt_. “I’d— I’d like it. If you were. Rough.” And he feels that sick swoop of guilt low in his stomach, turns his head so Richie won’t see it in his eyes, staring into the pitch black.

Richie decides he doesn’t like that. That hollowed out sound in Eddie’s voice, the way he looks away. He turns his face back — “Eddie, look at me,” and tries to read those dark eyes. 

It’s not like Richie doesn’t know that things sometimes go this way. It’s not like being closeted has somehow shielded him from the sexual proclivities of others. The internet, for one, is a very weird place, and he’s watched some very weird things on it. But this doesn’t feel weird, doesn’t feel unnatural at all. But he sure to fuck isn’t going to do something Eddie doesn’t want. Especially not if he doesn’t know where it’s coming from. 

Richie’s bracing himself with forearms on the carpet, cradling the other man’s head, faces so close. His glasses have slid a little, down his nose from the exertion, but he can still see him clearly and he rocks his hips slow, soft, like the sea to the shore. The sound whispers through the dark. “I’ll fuck you, if you want. If you want me to, but—” he winces a little. It’s too much conversation for right now. Or maybe the conversation is the important part. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for this fucking person, but he’s not going to do it, if it’s for the wrong reasons. He’s not going to do it, if it leads to that look in Eddie’s eyes.

But he thinks there’s a way it could be right.

It’s obvious, when Eddie turns his face back to look at him, how deeply ashamed he is. “I just want it to _last_.” His voice closes on it, because he’s so turned on he might die, because he’s so humiliated he _wants_ to die. Because it’s one thing wanting to sleep with men and quite another to look at your best friends hands and imagining them striking flesh so hard they leave marks. Because it’s one thing thinking about blowing a guy and another to think about him using his belt to tie him down.

“I just— please, Rich. I’m sorry.”

“If you apologize to me one more time, I’m gonna kill you for real,” Rich says. He says it softly, along the line of Eddie’s jaw and presses his hips down harder. For a moment it’s just their breathing, the slide of their clothes — his clothes — together. He switches to the other side of his jaw and bites, softly. “You ever think about fucking me?” he asks. “Before we left Derry for school, did you? Tell me what you want. Tell me what you wanted.”

Because Richie feels like he doesn't know how to do this with just motion and pressure and ache. He’s used to Eddie’s endless monologues about staphylococcus and toxoplasmosis. He wants to know who else Eddie slept with and when and what the fuck he’s been doing all these years, and not just bits and pieces. They came back here to this shitty little town and they dove straight into the belly of the beast. But all he can see now, is Eds.

“I thought about you fucking me.” Eddie says, voice small and quiet like he’s a teenager again, turning his face away because he can’t talk about this and look at him. “I thought about— you know, like, if we were ever in the Barrens alone, I’d think—” His skin is burning, he can feel it, can hear the blood rushing in his ears. “And at college I— I didn’t forget right away and I—” _Used to go looking for boys like you. Big eyes and big hands and beautiful._ “There’d be these parties and these clubs and—” Breathes in, then out, shaky. “And I was— I would— because I could, because Ma wasn’t there and I— I just—.” He glances up at him, then away. “The first time, I said your name, and had to pretend it was because I was drunk, but—.”

Startled at that, Richie draws away slightly. He doesn’t remember forgetting Eddie, only that he did. That he must have, logically, woken up one morning without Eds in his head anymore. He hates to think of what would happen if he hadn’t come back. If, maybe somehow, Mike never got his phone number or couldn’t get through or… He slips a hand between them and undoes Eddie’s pants, drawing his cock out. He thinks there’s no fucking way in hell he ever could’ve realized how much… how ridiculously in love they both were. 

“I’d see people that looked like you on the street,” Richie says, stroking his cock so slowly. “And in college I did these— like little shows, you know, openers and I’d always just— I’d see you in the audience. Kind of half-blinded by the stage lights… I wrote my own stuff back then,” he says, slicking his thumb over the head of Eddie’s dick, finding it slick. He slides his hand down over him. “Sometimes someone would laugh, and it sounded just like yours and I’d look... after a while I forgot what I was looking for.” He thinks _I wish you’d kissed me in the Barrens, in the bathrooms at school, on the soccer field beneath the bleachers, behind the falling-down toolshed in my backyard._

But Eddie doesn’t want to talk about this. Doesn’t want to talk about the mistakes he made while his body sought Richie, but then Richie’s hand is on him and he’s talking and it’s so _warm_ in here. “The first— The first boy I ever kissed had an overbite like you.” Shuddered out of him like Richie is waterboarding him rather than getting him off, Eddie’s hips lifting into it. He wants to cry again, but doesn’t, doesn’t know what to do with his hands. Flutters them over Richie’s jaw, down his neck, across his shoulder. Thinks about the Quarry, about swimming, about Richie thin and pale and Richie in front of him huge and tan. “My brain forgot you before my h-heart did.”

Richie laughs softly, but there’s a furrow in his brow. “You’re such a sap,” he tells him. “Oh my god, you absolute girl.” He twists his hand on Eddie’s cock, beginning to move faster. At the same time, he presses himself against Eddie’s hip, grinding against him until he can feel the dampness growing again, where the head of his cock presses up towards his waistband. 

He thinks of what he wants to say, before he drops his forehead down to Eddie’s shoulder, rocking against him, stroking him off. He wants to say _Think you’re still ready for me?_ Wants to say _The first boy I ever kissed was you._ Wants to say _Wish you’d kissed me first_ , instead. Instead he says against his skin “You want me to fuck you here, like this? On the floor of the Town House?” 

Where’s the boy who’s afraid of germs and bacteria, he wonders.

“Yes. Please.” Squeakily, because god yes. Yes he does. Uses both hands to clutch at him and ignores the girl comments because he’s been called worse. He’s been called so much worse. Breath hitching again, Eddie whines and presses up against him, turning his head to nip at his ear, trying to find the word for _turned on_ and _sad_ , searching for the junction where they meet.

His hands trail down, then back up as he undoes Richie’s trousers again and strokes fingers over his stomach. His chest. Those shoulders, and Richie’s breath stutters out of him, his stomach jumping against Eddie’s fingers. 

Richie pulls back long enough to get Eddie’s pants off again, wrenching them free from his ankles, but doesn’t bother with his own. They’re undone, though, and low on his hips. “Are you— you want me to, um—?” oh God, he’s drowning suddenly. He doesn’t know how to do this. “Do you need me to… what do I do?” he asks, spiraling into helplessness so quickly he grins. “Bet I was better in your fantasies, eh?” Nervous fingers push through his hair, snag. He corrects his glasses on his nose and swallows. Richie Trashmouth Tozier, fucking felled by the impossibility of having everything he’s ever fucking wanted, after losing what felt like almost everything. Everything but the others.

Eddie wants to laugh. He wants to laugh and he wants to cry. “I—.” Shakes his head, huffing quietly, smiling. “Did the room come with, like, lotion or something? Spits fine for fingers but—.” Gestures down to his erection, eyebrows raising. “That monster’s going to need m-more than that.”

Richie laughs out loud, raucous and too noisy for this time of night. And that smile — the one he’s finally gotten out of Eds… He reaches down and touches Eddie’s mouth, drags his thumb over that lower lip again. “I miss your freckles,” he tells him, before he flushes, embarrassed (by _that_ of all things, of all they’ve done tonight), and heaves himself to his feet — it looks like it takes some doing — and, hitching up his pants, heads to the bathroom where there’s two little bottles of lotion. He thinks it’s hand cream.

He comes back with one, standing over Eddie in the half-dark. “You really want it down there?” he asks. “Because if I get down there again, I dunno if I’m getting back up.”

Eddie fixes him with a look, half irritated half amused, and gets up. Sheds what he has left on his body and cocks a hip at him, hard and glistening. “Do you want me to talk you through how to put your dick in a hole too, dumbass?” Then he’s pulling him closer by his belt loop, sucking his bottom lip into his mouth as he feeds him a deep kiss, breaking away to bend over the bed. Props his chin up on his hand and looks at him, then spreads his legs. “Or haven’t you fucked a girl, ever, either? Because if you’re a virgin i deserve to know.”

“I am a virgin, actually,” Richie says. He’s a liar, but it could be funny. He steps forward and takes hold of Eddie’s hips, pulling them back into him, the fabric of his dress pants between them driving him fucking insane. He grinds against his ass and leans over him, easily (Jesus, Eddie’s so _small_ ) to bite his shoulder. “All that stuff about me and those girlfriends, all fabricated.” That’s true at least, and Richie’s never had a _girlfriend_ , but there’s been women. Sometimes the same ones, sometimes not. They all tired of him in the end. Or he, them. He’s too much for a lot of people. Maybe it’s always been that way.

Richie has always worried, somewhere deep inside him, that he was annoying his friends. Not just in a playful, obnoxious way, but _really_ annoying them. Like maybe the reason he was always the fucking doorman was because they just didn’t want to listen to him anymore. They didn’t want him around. Maybe he’s one too many. Bill drifted, as they got older — and then it was Bill and Beverly and Bill and Stan. It’s not like Richie didn’t see the shared looks between them, sometimes, when he talks a little too long, or says a little too much of the wrong thing. He remembers that, now

Now. When he’s got his hand wrapped around Eddie’s dick — this thing that he spent almost his entire life thinking was impossible. He strokes him as he grinds slowly against his ass. He thinks that the _saving myself for your mom_ is probably overkill at this point. Eddie’s going to think he’s run out of jokes, run out of material. He lets him go just long enough to twist him by the hips, push him over onto his back, and leans over him. “Don’t you think my first time deserves to be face to face?” Because he sure to fuck isn’t going to take him this way. Not the first time. Not right after Eddie’s come back from… from wherever he was. Because he wants to be different from the other guys — he wants to be different from what he imagines it’s been like, for Eds. Those guys — ancient history. Eddie’s special. Richie knows that. Fuck whoever didn’t see it.

“What, my mom held out on you?” Eddie says for him, looking up at him. Really looking before he reaches to grab a pillow, stuffs it under his head, and keeps looking. Richie from all angles is beautiful. Reaches a hand up to thumb over his jawline, and blinks slow. “I won’t break. Neither will you.”

“I’d be pretty upset if you broke my dick,” Richie says, meeting those eyes. Christ, it’s hard to look away. The bed is high enough that he can stand with Eddie between his legs and still fuck him. Useful. He grabs his thighs and pulls him closer, pulls him right against him. He keeps one of Eddie’s legs up around his hip, and with the other he undoes his own pants, pushing them down around his thighs. He pulls off his own shirt and then leans over him, tongue sliding over Eddie’s ribs, over his nipple. “I have a confession to make,” he says against his jaw, and then bites down. “I was holding out for you. I never actually fucked your mom.”

Tactfully ignoring him: “You got so _big_.” Eddie sighs again, head tilting back and eyelashes fluttering as Richie bites him, then shifting a little to part his legs against his hips, grabs at the lotion Richie had provided and smothers his own fingers.

“Yeah, well you were raised on condensed mi—” Richie isn’t even completely through the sentence — as to why Eddie is small, birdlike, when Eddie gives Richie a taste of his own damn medicine. He lifts himself with the balls of his feet on the edge of the mattress and slides his fingers inside himself. Says: “This is what I did for your show.”

And Richie just stops because it’s Eddie in high school, pulling his shirt up to wipe the gleam of sweat from his face; it’s walking into the door all over again. He has to put one hand down on the mattress to keep his knees from just giving out. “Oh my god,” Richie breathes, and it sounds more like a moan than he’d like it to. Without thinking he reaches down to his own cock, stroking himself lightly, his eyes riveted on Eddie’s fingers. “You didn’t even know who I was, not really,” he says, like they both don’t know that. “I looked like I’d stuck my finger in a socket at that show… I, I hadn’t ironed my shirt. That must have been sexually confusing for you.” He doesn’t even know what he’s fucking saying really. He’s breathing too shallow, too quick. “You probably… dressed nice to go, hm? Gelled your hair and shaved and everything. Like maybe I’d notice you…” He runs a hand through Eddie’s hair now — dry now, after the bath, free of product and impossibly soft. 

“Oh you think you could have resisted this if you’d fuckin’ noticed?” Eddie says, grins up at him, a little feral. “And I shave every day, dickhead, the—.” Gets distracted, fingers plunging deeper, thighs shaking. “The lumberjack look doesn’t suit me, fuck.” He closes his eyes, tilting his head back into Richie’s hand. “I _like_ that you’re big, idiot. Fuck, it’s my favourite fucking thing— that’s what got me when I saw you— I kept thinking about how big your hands are, your thighs, your fucking _shoulders_ , fuck.” He breathes, tilting his hips up.

Richie grasps around for the lotion, fingers squeezing around the base of his cock as he watches him. He slicks it over himself — weird consistency, but he’s used worse. Long story. It’s easier than taking the compliment. He’s used to making jokes about his appearance not— not this. “When did you start touching yourself like this?” he asks instead. _Not just tickling your pickle._

“When I was fifteen, maybe? Whenever you got super into soccer.” Eddie gasps, mouth glistening like his cock, and spreads his legs further.

Jesus Christ, Richie remembers when they could barely wrap their heads around sex at all. It’s never fucking occurred to him to even try on himself, even when he entertained thoughts of doing this with men. Except other men never amounted up to Eds. Richie half grins at him, eyes dark. “So when are you gonna fucking let _me_?” His cock jerks, just remembering the way Eddie had clenched around his fingers. Feeling that on his cock, coming inside him… fuck— just the thought sends something fluttering through his stomach. He feels a little unhinged, a little like the world’s tilted on its axis.

“You’re not _actually_ asking that, are you Trashmouth? Feel free to take over whenever you want.” Because suddenly all he can see is the bob of Richie’s dick in the dark, the girth and weight of it stark against his stomach. “I’ve only been trying to get you to do this for like an hour, no biggie.”

“Aw, I just like to watch you squirm, Eds,” Richie tells him. And then, not to be outdone he leans down over him and takes Eddie’s cock into his mouth, fingers curling around his wrist but not pulling his hand away from himself just yet. He takes him in as far as he can, the heavy, damp heat of him. It makes him fucking ache and he thinks he hopes he can hold out because if he comes in his pants like a teenager he will never ever live it down. 

The grin unfurls on Eddie’s face before he can stop it, eyes falling closed as he arches his back and purrs. “Richie…” _you don’t have to, I love you, I love you._ “Fuck, Richie.” He scissors his fingers. All the nights he dreamed of this as a teenager, the quiet breakdown he’d had in his own hotel room before facing the leper, the endless burning desire to drink until he couldn’t feel things anymore… it all boils down and culminates in Richie’s hands on him, his eyes on him, his mouth on him.

Richie pushes him back a bit, on the bed, because he’s still slightly too tall to do this, and really he could have planned it better. But then there’s the clean salt taste of him on his tongue, the soft sleekness of him, and Richie thinks that he cannot fucking _believe_ he’s waited nearly forty years to suck a dick because he was fucking missing out. And he thinks, _fuck_ , he thinks he just needs to hear Eds say his name like that about an infinity more than he already has. 

Richie fucking _desperately_ hopes that his technique isn’t painfully, obviously, virgin-like. It’s not like he’s never gone down on anyone before. Christ, what’s he been _doing_ with his life. 

“What have I been doing with my life?” he surfaces to ask. “When I should’ve, obviously, just been finding creative ways to suck your dick.” 

He’s so fucking hard it hurts, and he slides one hand down over himself, very lightly, then tugs Eddie’s wrist gently. Doesn’t actually pull, just indicates that he… if he wants to stop — fuck — if he wants to let Richie…

“There are so many other options,” says Eddie — and he raises his eyebrows, because Richie is still acting like Eddie doesn’t want him to fuck him into next week — and pulls his fingers free of himself. “Come here.” It’s a plea rather than a demand, using one of his legs to pull him closer, pull him down so that he can lick his own taste from his mouth, voice high and keening as he moans. “Stop acting so _scared_.” Breathed, one hand scratching over his scalp affectionately. “I’m about to blow your mind.”

Richie laughs, but he doesn’t exactly feel it. He fucking is scared. He is. He’s aware, on some level, that this changes everything — has already changed everything. Because he’s not about to let Eddie go, and he gets that this will mean that he can’t hide anymore. Not really. At the same time, he isn’t sure he wants to be hiding, but it’s too much to think of at once. It’s too much to try to think about now.

Eds says _I’m about to blow your mind_ and Richie leans down over him. “I believe you,” he breathes against his lips. And he remembers, suddenly, the promise that Eddie made earlier — _I won’t break, and neither will you_. He can’t stop kissing him suddenly — maybe he’s scared to stop in case he starts overthinking. More than he already is. 

He hitches Eddie closer to him, thighs flush against the side of the bed, and reaches down to wrap a hand around himself, his cock still slicked with the lotion. He only pulls back long enough to see what he’s doing, to guide himself to his entrance, and pushes the tip inside. Shudders, squeezing his eyes shut behind his glasses. “Ohshit,” he says.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Eddie returns, whimpered, grasping at him, back and neck arched again and he knows it will hurt later but he can’t bring himself to care. Because this is nothing. Richie’s barely inside him, barely moving, and his cock is leaking clear already. It’s like he can feel him in the hair on his legs, for fucks sake. He’s waited three decades for this. He’s waited a lifetime and more. And his body knows it. The beat of his broken black heart in his chest knows it. “Fuck, _Richie_.” What else can he say? What else can he do but lift his hips and bare himself to the man he’s been in love with since he can’t remember?

Richie starts shaking all over which is — he’s not exactly sure why. He’s shaking like he’s cold, teeth chattering and everything, only he’s not. He’s flushed and his heart is beating fast — so fucking fast. He feels reckless and wild. He opens his eyes and pushes deeper inside of him, feeling the muscle and heat, slick but tight — so fucking tight. His breath shakes and stutters from his lungs, and he’s got his eyes fixed on Eddie, on his face, his dark lashes, the fair skin across his nose where he knows freckles used to be. He grabs hold of both Eddie’s thighs and pulls him closer — not too hard, but faster maybe than he should. He digs his fingers into his flesh. This gasp kind of sobs out, clawing its way out of his throat as his cock jerks. Oh fuck, he’s way too turned on. He’s way too close already. If he can push inside him as deep as he wants to — needs to be — he can kiss him. Instead of just shaking and shuddering above him, and clinging to Eddie’s thighs for dear life.

It’s taking too long, Eddie thinks, the slow push and drag of Richie inside him delicious and delirious. Eddie whimpers, always whimpers, pushing himself down with his elbows and closing his eyes tight as the movement thrusts Richie home for him. “Fuck, fuck—.” Like this he can lever his hips himself, his body rolling against Richie’s like the boiling sea. Like the river he’d dragged himself out of. “Fuck, Richie, please— kiss me— or— fingers— anything—.” He chokes on his own spit, feels sweat dripping down his neck and precome dripping onto his stomach. He could go insane from sheer overstimulation.

And he thinks distantly that it should hurt but it doesn’t. Like Richie was made to live inside him. To stretch him out and burn him from the inside out. “You’re so _big_ , Richie.” Never without a hint of wonder, a whine to his voice.

Richie does kiss him. Tumbles over him first with this sound— this sound that would have embarrassed him in front of _anyone_ fucking else — anyone else, but not Eddie, and he’s got one hand gripping Eddie’s thigh and the other cupping his cheek, thumb dragging over Eddie’s lower lip before he kisses him deep and insistent and sweet. “Eddie,” he breathes against his mouth. He laughs through his whine, or the other way around, and he thinks _slow down_ , thinks _I’m gonna come already_ , but he doesn’t want him to slow down, either. It’s this perfect rhythm, this sweet rising ache that he’s trying so fucking hard — toes curling in the carpet — to resist, even as everything in him builds and builds until he thinks he’s going to come apart or disintegrate or die. His heart is beating so fucking fast, but he can’t stop. All he wants is to get somehow closer. Like this, Eddie’s cock slides between their stomachs, hard and hot and slick, and he makes a sound like a sob against his mouth. For once in his entire fucking life he’s shut up — no more strings of profanity and wit, it’s just, “Eds, Eddie, Eddie…”

The thing is, Eddie thinks, is that he’s fucking forty years old and he feels like a teenager. Feels virginal, feels his orgasm slamming through him even as he tenses and wills it away. “Richie I can’t—. I’m gonna—. Are you?” Drawn from him like a dying breath, one hand shooting down between them to squeeze himself hard. To wait until Richie says it’s okay. “Can I—?” And he turns his head to lick those fingers at his cheek, to nibble at a knuckle, to press his lips against the stretch of skin between thumb and forefinger.

He wants to feel Richie come so badly he could die from it.

“Yes, please please please come,” Richie breathes in a rush against his mouth, against his temple. His face is momentarily buried in Eddie’s hair when Eddie turns his head, and he doesn’t want to fuck up, he doesn’t want to lose it too fast. But then his breath hitches with a painful sound in his throat and then his grip slips from Eddie’s thigh. “Ohshit,” he breathes, and he’s clutching the mattress instead, grasping for something, anything to keep him from— It’s too late though. He comes harder than he thinks he’s ever come. It fucking blinds him and he keeps rocking against him, keeps trying to meet Eddie’s hips with his own but he’s lost the rhythm entirely — pitched over the edge and into this impossible, endless release. It almost hurts, but he’s clinging to it as much as he can: the way he pulses, like a heartbeat, into the centre of Eddie. It feels fucking transcendent.

Someone, somewhere, screams. It takes Eddie a few moments — moments in which he’s sure his dick rockets off his body and flies around the room through the sheer force of his climax — to realise it’s him, and it’s Richies name, a shrieked prayer on his lips. And it blurs everything. Like an oil pastel picture, colours and memories melting together until Eddie’s not sure if they’re forty in a hotel room or sixteen in the clubhouse. All he knows is Richie, filthy, sweating, glorious, shining above him. Inside him. Drumming into him like he belongs there. And he does.

Eddie’s legs stay wrapped around him until they’re both breathing more evenly, until Richie is soft enough to slide out without trying, his eyes unfocused and far away.

“Holy fuck,” Richie says after a little while. He tries to straighten up and says “Oh, help,” and has to scrabble at the sheets and at Eddie to keep himself upright on wobbling legs until he can collapse onto the mattress beside him, shoulder to shoulder, eyes on the ceiling. “That was fucking insane, dude,” he informs the ceiling. His glasses are smudged to shit, curls sticking to his forehead and temples. 

“Yeah.” Eddie breathes. Breathes again. Still can’t focus as he gropes for the other man’s hand. “Yeah, fuck, I’m not sitting down for a week.” His tailbone is screaming already, and he can’t close his legs. Doesn’t particularly want to. Wants to bathe in the afterglow of this deliciousness forever. “I want to stay here forever.” He says, because Richie deserves to hear it.

Richie bites his lip — he feels weirdly, pleasantly numb. Blinking, it takes him a minute to put the sentence together in his head — to figure out how he wants to say this — figure out how to say it. “Why don’t you?” he asks, his voice too soft for Trashmouth Richie. “I mean...” he swallows and turns his head to him. “...With me?” It’s almost not quite a question. His heart is pounding in his throat — like it’s made a permanent home there. They’ve gone about this all wrong, all backwards, he thinks, and he told him that he loved him right after he shoved him into the mini bar — _I do fucking love you._

But this, what he’s saying now — he’s asking. It is a question, all of it. Outside of the desperation, the sex, the impossible, desperate high of Eddie being _alive_ for Christssake, of finding one another at the end of it all, outside of killing the fucking clown and coming back to Derry and remembering _everything_ … does Eddie really… is it bigger than this hotel room? This moment, this place? 

Is it real enough to make it to dawn? Big enough to make it out of Derry and out of Maine? 

The real question: Does Eddie love him, the way he’s been in love with Eddie his whole fucking life?

“Are you asking me to elope?” Eddie asks, “‘Cause I’d have to ask my mom.” 

Richie laughs, and Eddie finally manages to curl onto his side, resting his hand on Richies stomach. “I wanted to leave Derry with you the second I saw you in the restaurant— no.” He thinks back, eyebrows furrowing, chewing the skin off of his bottom lip. “When— the fortune cookies. And like. Knowing that Ben loves Beverly. And he didn’t even—. And your first thought was me?” Eddie shakes his head against the mattress, leans close to kiss sweat off his bicep. “I heard you say my name and it was like coming home for real. And I came back here and packed up my shit and came downstairs to ask you to wait and Bev had a nervous breakdown and—. All I could think was ‘let’s go, Richie, I’ll have my goddamn papers in the post tomorrow if that’s what you want’.” He sighs, bites him gently. “I was ready to disappear with you after having fucking dinner, you insecure little bitch.”

And fuck, Richie remembers. Remembers their gathering at the Jade, and the way Eddie’s name had spilled out of his mouth when the night turned nightmarishly horrible. Eddie’s name before anyone else’s. _Instead_ of anyone else’s, and how he’d felt like maybe that alone would give him away. 

And apparently it had. 

He says, “I would seriously fucking elope with you, dude, but if you call me a little bitch again, I will literally divorce you immediately. Also, I sh— ow, you have sharp teeth. Listen, fuck, seriously I know I said it, but it wasn’t— I know I _said_ it but I do fucking— I have. I’ve always, as long as I can remember—” he clears his throat soft, nervous. “—Loved you.”

“You know to get me to _stop_ calling you a little bitch you have to be less of a little bitch, right?” Eddie huffs against his skin, grinning as he trails patterns against his belly. “And yeah. I know that _now_ you absolute disaster. You’re like a fucking clam. I literally had to pound feelings out of you, are you proud of that?” His tone is warm though, affectionate, shuffling closer as his hand moves up his chest. Fingers over the hinge of his jaw, the shell of his ear, lifting himself up onto his elbow to look down at him. “I keep remembering things. I’m scared I’ll forget them if I’m not with you. I want to be with you.” Eddie kisses his nose, his chin, then sits up and takes his glasses off his face to clean them on the sheets. “Like you said you were married and I was ready to like, leave the restaurant and just fling myself into the sewers, dickhead. ‘Yeah no me and your mom’, prick. Driving me to clown assisted suicide, how fucking dare you.”

Richie squints at him without his glasses, already missing that touch on his skin. If he gets hard again, though, he’ll probably literally die. “You said _you_ were married,” Richie says. “And I thought, ‘oh of fucking course he is, you idiot,’” and then like… drank about fifteen shots in as many minutes.” He rolls onto his side to face him, but he’s too long for the bed, and he drags himself up onto the pillows properly. “C’mere,” he tells him, and reaches out. “Also, I would be with you. I will, I mean, if you want. Just… I’m… hm. Thinking about telling people kind of makes me want to puke my guts out. Not because it’s you, you make it… it’s just… fucking Henry Bowers…” he laughs softly. “Long story… long, shitty… fucked up… I dunno.”

“Henry Bowers stuck a knife in my face and you axed his brains out.” He says it like he’s commenting on the weather, following him without thinking about it, falling onto his back in the crook of his arm and shifting to press his nose into the thatch of hair under his arm. “And yeah. I got married. To my fucking mother. Because I didn’t know what else to do. Well done for having more self possession than I did.” He rests the pads of his fingers on his chest, over his heart, and breathes with him. “I would be with you if you wanted to tell the world. I would be with you if you wanted to tell the Losers. I would be with you if you wanted us to be two guys chilling in a hot tub five feet apart because they’re not gay. I don’t give a shit. I just want to make up for lost time.”

It’s an extension of the lie, though. This would be Richie lying, still. Eddie isn’t sad for himself, but for Richie. He pulls his chest hair gently. “You know after seeing your dick something little like a homophobe doesn’t scare me, right? I stared into the void and the void came in me.”

Richie breathes a laugh. “That’s fucked up, Eds,” he tells him, but he rolls into him, wraps an arm around him like he should’ve done the _first_ goddamn time they did this, but better late than never. “I actually think it’s less self-possession and more no one wanted to bother for long,” he says, and tries to push down the fear that that’s not just a trait of people outside of Eddie. Maybe Eddie, too, will get burnt out on Richie Trashmouth. He can’t think about that right now. It never does much good to agonize over what might happen. Instead, he presses his face into Eddie’s hair and gets both arms around his back and just holds on. They just breathe, breathe each other in. He wonders _how the fuck did we end up here_ and thinks all roads lead to this and then he says, breaking the stillness, “Wait, did you just quote a vine at me?” 

“Richie I swear to Christ if you go wobbly on me now I will straight up yeet you out of the window.” Because he feels like this is good. This is a good way to make him laugh. “And yeah, I quoted Vine, do you wanna make something of it? You wanna tumble with Kaspbrak?” He kicks at him gently under the covers. “I’ll bite your ankles so hard you’ll end up with hooves, motherfucker.” Pushes kisses in at his throat, nose jammed in at his veins. Pokes at his stomach. “You might be bigger but I fight fucking dirty, bro, I’m from Noo Yawk.” He plays up the accent, then digs his fingers into his sides to tickle him. “You’ve had an entire afternoon of me convincing you that I’m completely, one hundo percent, head over ass, no holds barred in love with you. So now I fear nothing. Because nothing is scarier than telling a dude you love him and for him to respond with fucking ‘yeah d’you want soup?’.”

“Okay, that is not what happened, you fucking asshole,” Richie counters, wriggling away from him and trying to catch his wrists to pin him. He gets one. “You said it, and then my fucking— brain short circuited and all I could think was that you looked like a drowned rat, and you were maybe gonna die of shock right there in front of me.” He catches the other wrist and pins them onto the pillow beside Eddie’s head. Half leans over him, eyes dark and searching. Eddie never did give him his glasses back and now he has no idea where they’ve gone again. He should get some fucking contacts or something. “Eddie Anklebiter Kaspbrak. I like your Noo Yawk accent, mistah,” he says, slipping right into it himself. “And now that ya mention it, I could use a sandwich right about now—” he switches out. “Seriously, I haven’t eaten in forever, and if you try and make me do anything that requires exertion before I eat I will probably have a stroke.” He looks down at him, tiling his head a little. “I am absolutely not calling you my ‘boyfriend,’ either. Are we doing this for real, ‘cause like? I need something. If I ever get up the guts to tell someone it’s gotta be cooler than that. Maybe Bev. We can maybe tell Bev. Jesus Christ, do they have room service here? I’m thinking ham and cheese or… a BLT or something. I want _meat_.”

“I got your meat right here baby.” Eddie says, acting up with that accent again, shimmying his hips as he speaks, laughter lines on his tired face. And then his stomach grumbles, and he groans. “Fuck, remember when we used to get hamburgers and eat them down the street from Ma’s? I would murder someone for a hamburger.” Looks up at him, like he’s considering. “How many burgers do you think you’re worth? Gimme your phone I’m going to order your body weight in them.”

The boyfriend thing hurts something low in his stomach.

_I’m not calling you my boyfriend._ Translates to; you’re not good enough. I’m embarrassed. Anyone would be. 

And he doesn’t want to think about that so he doesn’t, just knocks Richie hard with his hipbone and swings himself up from under him to look for his phone, taking the duvet with him and narrowly missing flinging his glasses across the room. “Oh hey there they are. Here, Velma.” Tosses them into his lap.

“Fuck you, Eddie,” he says, but he’s smiling hard. He puts them on and grins sweetly at him. Mischievously. “Eddie spaghetti. If you’re getting a burger, then get me one.” He doesn’t get out of bed though. He’s not sure his legs can take it. “Phone’s over there, by the— the landline phone. Also, come back. You took all the blankets, and it’s cold.”

“Eat soup and freeze, fucker.” But he’s smiling despite the insecurity creeping over his shoulders, shuffling back to him with the phone held out. “Milkshakes too?”

Richie sulks, and then leans over the side of the bed for his pants at least, which he doesn’t put on. His shirt is elsewhere, and it’s covered in swamp anyway. “ _God_ , yes. Oh, am I calling?” he takes the phone from him. “They think I booked this room for just myself, and you want me to order enough food for four people. Thanks a lot. Also, I yelled at that kid.”

That kid… jesus. He’s dead now. 

“You didn’t mean to. You were just scared.” Eddie crawls up the bed to kiss him, settling between his thighs like a cat.

Richie furrows his brow and stares down at his password screen, forgetting, for a moment, what he’s doing. He shakes himself out of it and puts in his passcode, then looks up at Eddie. “Let’s get out of here,” he says. “Tonight.” 

“And go where?” Soft, features still exhausted but gentle in the lamplight, brown eyes sparkling like he’s all of fourteen again. “Where d’you wanna go, Hon?” It’s out of his mouth before he can stop it and Jesus Christ he sounds gay.

Richie’s breath escapes him in this embarrassing rush at that word, the affection in it, and his eyes flicker to Eddie’s and then away. _Home_ he thinks, but he doesn’t know where that is, not really. He has his apartment in Beverly Hills — small and beige and cramped and somehow dark in spite of the Los Angeles sun. He doesn’t know where to go so instead it’s: “I’m— sorry, what did you call me?” he asks, and his fingers slip around the back of Eddie’s neck, thumb sliding over his cheek because he’s going to make fun of him, but he wants it again. He wants that to be Something Eddie Calls Him, but he can’t say that out loud. 

“I called you dickhead, fucker.” Because he recognised that look, the way Richie’s mouth was twisting. But the hand on his neck is so warm and solid, and he’s smiling, leaning into it as he breathes slow and steady on his chest. “Seriously. Where are we going? I don’t wanna go back to New York. I wanna go somewhere no one knows me.” Nuzzles under his chin to kiss at his throat. “I wanna see everything.”

“L.A.,” Richie suggests, tipping his head up and swallowing, wanting him closer. “But my apartment sucks.” He reaches up to rub his forehead with his free hand. He almost doesn’t want to go back there. He hadn’t realized, until coming back to Maine, how much he missed rain. L.A., Reno, Vegas. Lights and sounds — casinos like carnivals, and the endless, sweeping desert. “I mean, we _could_ go somewhere no one knows us. Start something new. We could go to fucking, uh… Seattle. Portland. Where do you wanna go, asshole?” Richie asks him, smile touching his lips, but fades quickly.

Because reality is slipping back to him in fragments, just like the strange soft grey of dawn will appear outside their window, once they get though these dark hours of the middle of the night. He has shows to get to — and shows after that he hasn’t even started memorizing. He has a life — one he’s built for himself — out amongst Beverly Hills’ sweeping arches and whitewashed buildings and so much dying grass. One, he realizes all at once, he doesn’t miss. 

“Anywhere with you.” Eddie moves, cuddling up against him properly, arms fitting around his waist and head leaning down against his chest. Eyes closed, listening to his heartbeat. “Somewhere sunny, for a while, I think. New York summers are basically hot wet winters.” He kisses him, lips trailing over his collarbone, without heat. Just for comfort, thumbs rubbing over the muscles of his back. “Somewhere I can get an all-body tan. With a gym. And a sushi place.” He doesn’t think he’s asking for much.

“Are you sure sushi won’t give you some kind of rash? I dunno, all that MSG and raw fish… oh shit, I was ordering food.” He finds his phone which has slid somewhere under his right hip and unlocks it again. It’s blinding, even in the lamplight. “Jesuschrist,” he mutters, and squints at it. His free arm is around Eddie, tracing strange, nonsense patters over his shoulder. He almost drops his phone twice, right onto his face, but manages to not do that. “Did you say you _do_ love cashews, ‘cause there’s a veggie burger here that I’m pretty sure is just cashews and sand. Is that what you want?”

“I’m going back to New York and I hope you choke on your burger.” He scowls into Richie’s flesh, sinking his teeth in just this side of hard. “I’m allergic to cashews you absolute donkey motherfucker. I’m never putting your dick near my mouth again I hope you open the door for the food and somehow fall down the stairs.”

“Then who would tell you about all this _pining_ I’ve done for you?” Richie asks him, and it comes out casual. Like it’s not dead true. He dials the number before Eddie can respond and realizes, very suddenly, that he is making a phone call to a fucking burger place while lying naked in bed with Eds. Who he’s just fucked. Who he’s been casually conversing about places they should live. Together.

For one horrible moment it feels so much like a dream that he gets vertigo. It hits him sharply, and he gets this horrible dropping sensation in his stomach that when the person on the other line picks up, he will wake up, alone — in the Town House or in Reno and Eddie will still be buried beneath the house on Neibolt Street.

He fumbles for the phone, sitting up at the same time, and dislodging Eds accidentally as he scrambles to hang up. His mouth fills unpleasantly with saliva and he makes a soft sound into his hand, like gagging, but doesn’t retch. The spinning slows. Holy shit. It leaves him shaky. “Eds?” he says, afraid to open his eyes, but he can feel him behind him — his warmth, the weight of him on the mattress. 

“I’m here, Hon.” Immediately, grabbing the phone and curling around Richie’s back and holding him tight. “I’ve got you. It’s alright. You’re okay. You’re alright. I’m here. I’m just gonna—.” Gets up, naked, and half sprints to the mini bar to grab a bucket. To shove it under the mans head, stroking his hair. “You and your fucking nervous stomach. Was I that bad of a lay?”

Richie laughs, a little chaotically. He takes the bucket and the cool, echoeyness of it makes him feel like a kid, when he was sick, his dad rubbing his back. He retches but nothing comes up, because he needs to _eat_ and hasn’t. He sets it aside, sitting back, leaning back into Eddie. “Ugh, okay— fuck… I’m okay. I just— for a minute, I felt like I was dreaming.” He bites his lip and then twists to face him. “Christ, I’m just totally freaked out that morning will come and this will be a dream. I’m scared to wake up,” he whispers, and looks away. He’s found Eddie’s hand, almost without meaning to, and he’s clutching at it tight.

“Get dressed.” Eddie says. He squeezes his hand and stands, looking around for the clothes Richie gave him. “Let’s go. Let’s get out of Derry. That’ll help.” Reaches down and pulls him to stand, holding him steady. “We can get drive thru and get another hotel in a few hours, or you can sleep while I drive, I don’t care. Derry is the problem here.”

“Yup,” he says immediately, getting up. He searches for his clothes, starts to get dressed. That makes him feel a little bit more real, starts to make the moment feel a little more real. Eds more real. It only takes a minute to get everything he has. All he brought was a duffel bag. He’s zipping it up as the thought occurs to him. “Shit, your things,” he says. “Your second fanny pack,” he starts to grin, but his eyes are a little wild. What happens to someone’s things if they’re dead? Did the hotel take care of them? Are they still there, in Eddie’s room?

“Who the fuck cares? If I’m dead all my important shit is invalid anyway.” And he just shoves what he was wearing in the trash. “Myra would have emptied the accounts and cancelled everything the minute after she hung up.” His shoes are still wet and grimy but he has nothing else. Richie’s would be too big for him. “Let’s just fucking go, okay? Let’s go.”

“Okay,” he says, and stands, shouldering the bag. He gives the place one last sweep, but that’s it — he hardly brought anything, because he didn’t really know what. He doesn’t even bother to fix the bed, just reaches out for Eddie’s wrist and doesn’t let go. Not as they rush down the stairs or past the front desk, or step out into the night. He doesn’t let go, because he’s scared to — because Eddie is warm and solid beneath his fingers. Because it’s fucking Eds. The parking lot is almost totally empty. Just Richie’s car and the shitty old beater of whoever’s working the night shift. He opens Eddie’s door for him. Like they’re on a date, but he doesn’t want to leave him outside, vulnerable to the night.

He practically runs around the car and throws himself into the driver’s seat and turns the car on. It’s blasting ZZ Top’s ‘Sharp Dressed Man’, and he shouts a little, startled, reaching to turn it down.

“You missed your calling to be part of a motorcycle gang.” Eddie laughs, loud over the music, buckling his belt before leaning over to kiss his cheek. “You sure you don’t want me to drive?” Because the man had had two orgasms and several very large shocks to his system. Eddie covers his hand with his own on the gear stick. That little gagging noise. He knew it well from their childhood, knew that Richie had thrown up when mike called… bites his lip. “You feeling okay?”

Richie meets his eyes once, uncertain, then glances away as he slides his free hand over the steering wheel, then looks back. “Never better,” he says, and leans close, pulling Eddie close by the back of his neck and kissing him hard and deep. It thrills something sharply through him. Makes him feel fucking _awake_. “You can drive us the fuck out of here,” he says, “But I want to show you something first.”

He pulls out of the lot and heads for the bridge.

**~**

It’s just barely dawn. That strange line of green hovers over the treeline, promising sunrise, eventually, and it hardly lights the night, so he leaves his headlights on, illuminating the bridge. It’s smaller than he remembers. They sit for a moment, the darkness hovering at the car’s windows. “Come on,” Richie says, when he’s finally got the nerve, and pops his door. It’s cold out — Autumn nights already, even though it’s barely September.

Richie’s somehow more nervous than he was in the Town House, when he told Eddie he loved him. This feels real. Like proof. And, god, he just wants him to know it, because as much as he can run his mouth off, Eddie can put it into words in ways Richie can’t. Not yet. This, he thinks, speaks volumes. This, he hopes, is better. He hopes it’s enough.

“What are we doing here Richie?” A punch of nerves in his gut, because this is Derry, because Richie has been afraid; _he’s going to throw me off the side._

But he gets out. Because yeah, this is Derry. But it’s also _Richie_. His Richie. Richie’s taste on his lips and the feel of him still deep in his body. Shivers, crowds close to his side as his breath fogs and goosebumps spring up on his arms.

The headlights illuminate the bridge to the other side, but Richie doesn’t like to look. It’s still too dark beyond the light. Instead, he brings Eddie to the place — the place overlooking the river — still touched by wind and sunlight, when there is sunlight, and he stops. It’s very simple. There’s no heart around it, no _forever_. Just R + E, there for anyone to see it.

“I made this when I was thirteen,” Richie says, and I… it looks new, because I re-carved it, after you— after I thought you died.” He pushes his hands into his pockets, his eyes on the letters. “Yeah,” he finishes, softly. 

There’s a beat, then two, then three. Eddie swallows, reaches out to brush his fingers over the carved wood and thinks _splinters_ and wants to cry. Feels the lump in his throat.

And then he does what the bridge was made for. He turns to lean back against their initials and drags Richie down by his collar, connects their lips and opens his mouth against his with his eyes squeezed tight shut. He can feel the tears on his cheeks but he doesn’t care. He just brings his hands up from Richie’s shirt to hold his face, just kissing and kissing and kissing him. He never wants to stop kissing him, heart jackhammering, sucking at his bottom lip in the hopes that _this_ will show Richie exactly how he makes him feel.

And for Richie, something barbed and cold — something that’s grown into a familiar ache, rusty with how long it’s been wrapped around his heart — loosens. And for a moment he’s not afraid of one single goddamn thing, as he just kisses him back, Holds his face and his neck and just presses into him, and fucking kisses Eddie Kaspbrak against the kissing bridge, the two of them illuminated by the headlights, lighting them up around the edges, copper and gold.

**Author's Note:**

> The quote "When we hit the city limits don't forget me for a minute tonight," in the series title is from the Rural Alberta Advantage Song, _North Star_.
> 
> Find us on tumblr!
> 
> [**liminalweirdo**](https://liminalweirdo.tumblr.com/) and [**slowlimbs**](https://slowlimbs.tumblr.com/)


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